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At high speeds, the Prado tends to hold its line pretty well, but under high speed cornering the presence of a small amount of body roll and understeer is evident, while the steering doesn't provide much in terms of road feel even though it does come across as being nicely weighted. The Ride Height Control system allows for either manual or automatic (speed sensitive) control of the vehicle's ride height. Then there's the bit called the four-wheel drive system itself which combined with the traction control system, down hill assist and hill-start control make the Prado seriously credible off-road. The switchable system with separate four-low and four-high modes has been designed to tackle anything that mother nature throws at it. Good approach and departure angles let you get around practically all sorts of impediments as we found out, though there were an instance or two where the belly did nudge the surface. Overall, the combination of power, chassis dynamics and intelligent kit make the Prado very capable off-road.
All of which now comes at a price. At Rs 53.6 lakh, the Toyota now dangerously treads into the territory of the Mercedes-Benz ML and Audi Q7 at one end and is nearly Rs 10 lakh more than the Mitsubishi Montero. It does have an impressive kit list to say the least, but isn't as powerful nor as sweet a handler as the Germans. It's great off-road and is efficient too - frankly it makes more sense now than its predecessor. At least now, most owners can drive around with their climate control systems firmly in the ON position.
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