- On the eve of the debut of its replacement, the 2024 Toyota 4Runner saves our plans to view a rare celestial event.
- The 2024 eclipse’s path of totality missed all but a sliver of Michigan, so we hustled down to rural Ohio from our Ann Arbor HQ to take it all in.
- Traffic jams and delays nearly foiled our plan, but thankfully we were able to bound quickly down dirt roads off the beaten path to make it to a prime spot for the eclipse.
Findlay, Ohio, is normally a quick hour and a half from Car and Driver headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But when we punched that destination into Google Maps on our way out of town to catch the eclipse in the path of totality, we were puzzled as to why it said the trip would take more than three hours.
Traffic clogged the main roads heading south from Ann Arbor, all lanes full of cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs carrying eclipse chasers like us. Some quick thinking got us unsnared, though, as we chose to navigate the old-fashioned way—kind of—ignoring Google’s suggestions and using the app to find back roads that would take us as far as we could.
It turns out that you can avoid the highway altogether, but it requires taking some pretty gnarly dirt roads covered in loose gravel, deep potholes, and uneven terrain. We thanked our luck that we had a 2024 4Runner TRD Pro for the day. The mid-size SUV, dressed in the new-for-2024 Terra paint job, allowed us to blast confidently down those rural roads, and we ended up making great time.
It still took us longer than the normal hour and a half to get to our eclipse-watching location, but that only gave us more time to admire the 4Runner’s capability, compliant suspension, high-speed stability on gravel, and charmingly retro interior.
The 2024 4Runner’s digital dash clock is simple and has a 1980s look to it, but it provided an important detail as we raced south. The eclipse’s totality lasted just over three minutes, so making it to our destination in time was crucial. We barely had time to snap a few photos of the 4Runner before the sun was entirely obscured by the moon.
This story isn’t without irony, though, as the sun is literally setting on this generation of the 4Runner. An all-new generation dawns tomorrow—Tuesday, April 9, at 10:15 p.m. ET, to be exact with timing—and while it’ll likely be a thoroughly modern machine in ways the current one is thoroughly not, we’re reminded by this trip of the outgoing model’s legacy.
Drew Dorian is a lifelong car enthusiast who has also held a wide variety of consumer-focused positions throughout his career, ranging from financial counselor to auto salesperson. He has dreamed of becoming a Car and Driver editor since he was 11 years old—a dream that was realized when he joined the staff in April 2016. He’s a born-and-raised Michigander and learned to drive on a 1988 Pontiac Grand Am. His automotive interests run the gamut from convertibles and camper vans to sports cars and luxury SUVs.