According to some eagle-eyed individuals, it appears the 2024 Toyota Tacoma may have moved its catalytic converters toward the engine bay to protect against theft. User 3QTRIG posted a snippet of a video from the Untamed Motors YouTube channel on the 4th Gen Tacoma forum. At the 1:30 mark, the shooter takes about 8 seconds to sweep the underside of a 2024 Tacoma TRD Off Road, and during that sweep, no catalytic convertor can be seen.
Now, this isn’t exactly a deep dive into the mechanicals of the pickup, but if hidden, it’s in line with what the company has done with the truck in the past. In 2016, the company came up with the idea of integrating the exhaust manifold into the cylinder head, allowing it to push the front catalytic converters into the engine bay. On V6 models, this meant two out of the four catalytic converters were basically impossible to access for thieves, and on four-cylinder models, one out of the two was safe.