10 Biggest News Stories of the Month: Toyota 4Runner Eases on Up, Hyundai Tucson Takes Up Space
They say you always find something in the last place you look — but sometimes you find it in the first place you look. Such was the case with the newest addition to the Cars.com fleet of long-term test vehicles, the 2025 Toyota 4Runner hybrid, which — wouldn’tcha know it? — we initially encountered on our very own online inventory. But that wasn’t the last place we wound up looking due to a special ordering process for the freshly redesigned 4Runner that’s based not on a made-to-order system, but on more of a “Tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll let ya know if we come across one” system, as recounted in one of Cars.com’s most popular articles of the past month.
Related: Video: 2025 Toyota 4Runner: Worth the Crazy Price Tag?
Despite the hit-or-miss potential of that wait-and-see approach for 4Runner procurement, the early alert from Cars.com combined with our quick action when the vehicle became available at a dealer (not to mention our willingness to plunk down two and a half times the standard deposit of a thousand bucks to reserve a car) enabled us to lay claim to our 4Runner Hybrid in TRD Pro off-road-optimized form. About two months later, we were in price negotiations — a give and take to be sure, as we got a better-than-expected-yet-still-disappointing $32,000 on our trade-in of our outgoing long-term fleet car, the 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe, and got the dealer to throw in some (but not all) of the few grand worth of included features we didn’t want. Ultimately, we paid $33,354.70, nearly 10% off the full retail price of just over $61,000 minus our trade-in.
For the full story on how we bought our 2025 Toyota 4Runner hybrid — and what we plan to do with it over the course of a year of intensive real-world test driving — follow the link below to the No. 5 news story on this month’s countdown of most read articles.
If the 4Runner’s rugged off-road readiness is a secondary concern to you over the “U” part of “SUV” (which is to say, utility), you’ll want to consult our compact SUV cargo-room comparison. As part of our comprehensive head-to-head testing of seven top competitors in the white-hot compact SUV market (the results of which you can find in the No. 1 spot below), we evaluated each vehicle’s cargo space using our standardized measurement methodology that eliminates automaker-to-automaker discrepancies. Coming out on top was the 2025 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid, which triumphed by a fairly wide margin with a total of 21.8 cubic feet of cargo space behind the back seat — 1.6 cubic feet better than its nearest rival, the 2025 Honda CR-V hybrid. The rest ranged from 18.6 cubic feet down to 16.5 cubic feet measured in the 2024 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, 2025 Nissan Rogue, 2025 Mazda CX-5, 2025 Chevrolet Equinox and 2025 Subaru Forester.
For the full details on how the 2025 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid took all cargo-room comers — including the victors in individual aspects of cargo space including width, height and underfloor storage — follow the link below to the No. 6 news story from April.
Beyond that, we’ve got headlines on the Nissan Rogue, Porsche 911, Toyota RAV4 Hybrid and much more — so don’t stop reading till the digits double. Here are the top 10 news stories Cars.com readers couldn’t get enough of in the past month:
1. What’s the Best Compact SUV for 2025?
2. 2025 Cars.com Affordability Report: Best Value New Cars
3. Here Are the 11 Cheapest Electric Vehicles You Can Buy
4. 2025 New York Auto Show: Winners and Losers
5. We Bought a 2025 Toyota 4Runner Hybrid, And It Wasn’t That Hard
6. Which Compact SUV Has the Most Cargo Room?
7. 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera S Review: What More Could You Possibly Need?
8. Which Compact SUV Has the Best Real-World MPG?
9. What Are the Best Used Cars for $20,000?
10. Here Are the 10 Cheapest New Cars You Can Buy Right Now
Cars.com’s Editorial department is your source for automotive news and reviews. In line with Cars.com’s long-standing ethics policy, editors and reviewers don’t accept gifts or free trips from automakers. The Editorial department is independent of Cars.com’s advertising, sales and sponsored content departments.
