4Season 4Runner: How Our Long-Term Toyota Does in the Snow

What Car Shoppers Need to Know

• Our long-term 2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Off-Road Premium features part-time four-wheel drive and all-terrain tires — neither of which are best for truly snowy, icy conditions.
• Knowing what kind of 4WD system your SUV has and how to properly use it are critical for driving in any inclement weather conditions.
• A full-time 4WD system, which is offered on other 4Runner trim levels, and proper winter tires would go a long way toward making our 4Runner a true winter champion.

A big reason people give for buying a high-riding, heavy, expensive 4WD SUV is because they want something safe and capable in bad weather, something that’ll get them through the worst of winter, stormy deluges or just slightly slippery conditions. But not all SUVs are built the same way — there are a variety of systems, and some are better suited for certain tasks than others.

We’ve had our 2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Off-Road Premium since April 2025, and we’ve enjoyed it through the summer months, taken it off-road, over trails and on family vacations. But we hadn’t used it in winter conditions until recently, with the Midwest getting plenty of snow and extremely cold conditions. So how is it doing in this harsh environment?

Eh … OK, I guess. Let me explain.

Related: We’ve Driven 10,000 Miles in Our Long-Term 2025 Toyota 4Runner. How Efficient Is the Hybrid?

4WD Is Not AWD

• Takeaway: Part-time 4WD, full-time 4WD and all-wheel drive are not the same thing — and knowing the difference and how to use them is important.

The TRD Off-Road Premium trim level of the 4Runner comes with specific equipment so it can perform decently off-pavement. This isn’t the most extreme off-road version of the 4Runner (that would be either the Trailhunter or the TRD Pro), but those models are much more expensive and highly specialized. Our 4Runner includes part-time 4WD, 18-inch alloy wheels with 33-inch Michelin LTX Trail all-terrain tires, Multi-Terrain Select with Crawl Control and Bilstein shock absorbers with remote reservoirs.

Part-time 4WD is good for low-traction situations off-road while full-time 4WD is better for daily driving in mixed conditions. AWD employs clutches and electronic controls to automatically route power to the wheels. The 4Runner does not offer AWD, but it does offer a full-time 4WD system. (For more information on driveline systems, click here.)

The systems our 4Runner has make it decently capable in the dirt, but ice and snow are a different animal entirely. And truth be told, the biggest decider of how capable any vehicle is in such conditions are its tires: Winter-rated tires are absolutely the best thing to have in winter regardless of whether your car is front-, rear- or four-wheel drive. But we got what we got on our 4Runner, which is part-time 4WD and all-terrain tires. Is it enough?

4Runner in the Snow

• Takeaway: The 4Runner TRD Off-Road Premium’s part-time 4WD system requires you to know when to engage it, making it less useful for bad weather conditions and changing road surfaces than full-time 4WD.

The nature of our 4Runner’s part-time 4WD system is such that you need to engage it when you think you’re going to need it — but there are limits to when you can do this. My time with the 4Runner in the height of winter involved a blizzard-conditions highway drive from Chicago to Ann Arbor, Mich., followed by a week of subzero temperatures and frequent drives on roads that were only partially snow-covered. As such, I found myself constantly shifting between rear- and four-wheel drive via the knob on the center console, with me acting as the SUV’s brain to determine when it’d be good to have a little extra traction, then having to judge the road surfaces ahead and whether it would be safe to use locked front and rear wheels. It’s a faff, as my British friends would say — an unnecessary fussy complication. I’d much rather have a selectable full-time 4WD system that lets me set it and forget it, relying on the vehicle’s sensors and extra equipment to determine 4WD engagement.

What’s more, the 4Runner’s Michelin LTX Trail tires proved to be not great in ice-and-snow conditions — despite having the M+S (Mud and Snow) rating. Proper winter tires featuring the Three-Peak Mountain Snowflake symbol (yes, that’s a real thing) would likely provide a vast improvement in the 4Runner’s winter capability, and if this was my personal vehicle, I would be selecting some for future winters for sure. The all-terrain tires on our 4Runner are best suited for mixed road-and-trail use, but less well suited as inclement-weather rubber.

The tires and the 4WD system are really what affect the 4Runner’s overall performance in wintery conditions, which I’d rate as “adequate, if you know how to drive.” This version of the 4Runner will not make you a better snowy-weather driver, nor will it make you any inherently safer or allow you to maintain better control. A full-time 4WD system and better snow-and-ice tires would go a long way toward making this 4Runner a true winter champion, but even just some different tires and practice in how to use this 4Runner’s 4×4 system would be valuable. That said, as it comes from the showroom floor, this is not the 4Runner trim level I’d suggest for people looking for a family-hauling winter snow buster.

More Long-Term Toyota 4Runner Coverage:

• What Do We Think of Our 2025 Toyota 4Runner’s Multimedia System?
• I Took the Toyota 4Runner Hybrid on a Road Trip for Thanksgiving. It Hurt.
• Removing Scratches in Our Long-Term Toyota 4Runner’s Paint
• What’s It Like Off-Roading in a 2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Off-Road?
• Shop for a 2025 Toyota 4Runner Near You
• Add Cars.com as a Preferred Source on Google

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