Ace of Base Redux: 1990 Toyota 4Runner

As the calendar flipped out of the coked-up 80s and into the next decade, the mash-up that was Diamond Star Motors cranked out all-wheel drive turbo coupes, Chevy unleashed the ZR-1 (with the hyphen, thank you very much), and we were watching Robert Duvall play an excellent portrayal of Harry Hyde.

Toyota, for its part, launched a new 4Runner sporting handsome and cleanly contoured sheetmetal, arriving at the perfect time to ride the wave of customers who were suddenly trading their cars for SUVs.

The 4Runner had been around since 1984, based off the Pickup/Hilux platform and providing off-road chops to challenge the original Cherokee. For its ’90 redesign (available in calendar year ’89), Toyota saw fit to depart from the agricultural roots of the OG 4Runner, which was essentially a pickup truck with a fiberglass cap grafted onto the box and some extra seats designed to skirt the chicken tax. Thankfully, Toyota retained the excellent fold-down tailgate.

Buyers would find the new-for-’90 4Runner had a remarkably high floor, ensuring folks who wanted an SUV simply for the image would take one look at the liftover height into the cargo area and make a beeline to the nearest Ford store, signing the note on one of those new Explorers. If a poser managed to make it past the jump-up-into-the-driver’s-seat cost of entry, at least we knew they were working for their social status. Making it up into the driver’s seat, buyers of base models were greeted by a full compliment of easy-to-read gauges, reclining cloth buckets, and a full fabric headliner. Hey, this was heady stuff back then.

If it appeared 4Runner drivers were especially sweaty, that probably meant they were either eating too many 3D Doritos (remember those?) or were wrangling a base model SR5, where power steering was not standard equipment. Yes, power steering was an option as late as 1990, but think of all the money drivers saved on a gym membership. P90X was still twenty years away.

Base 4Runners of this vintage were equipped with a five-speed stick and Toyota’s legendary 22RE fuel-injected SOHC four-cylinder. A 3.0-liter V6 was on offer, cranking out 150 horsepower compared to the smaller mill’s 116 hp, but the OHC six-pot proved to have head gasket issues down the road (cue the Toyota jihad that will point out gazillion-mile, trouble-free examples and proceed to burn effigies in my name). New vehicle buyers didn’t know that, of course.

Not yet swayed by today’s trend of offering vehicles with all the visual color of a Charlie Chaplin movie, the ’90 4Runner was available in no less than twelve different shades of paint and four distinct interior colors. These things look best in Cardinal Red, always have. Feel free to disagree. Feel free to be wrong.

I maintain that early 90s Toyota was peak Toyota, cranking out good looking, reliable machinery with well screwed together interiors. Asking price may have outstripped its competitors (witness a fully loaded ’90 4Runner for $25,779 or $43,943 in 2016 dollars) but, for once, buyers got what they paid for. Records show that base, rear-drive, four-door strippers checked in at close to $16,000 in 1990.

Bulletproof engine, baseball-bat shifter sticking out of the floor, rugged good looks, and some off-road chops. If that doesn’t check off the Ace of Base boxes, I don’t know what will.