Loc Nar posted some good info I won't reiterate. They were short some folks at the 9AM time slot, so my wife and I both got to drive our own vehicles, instead of swapping mid drive. We had different professional driver interactions, as she got the only girl coach and they interfaced very well, and I got a guy with a very similar military history to myself and we ended up talking story during the drive, so I missed some vehicle details, but it didn't hurt my feelings.
Coming from a 1st gen manual Tacoma Xtra Cab that rides like a dump truck, both Chrissy and my takeaway was how smooth the ride in the vehicle was. The trail was not difficult, but had enough deep ruts and back and forth to make the vehicle swing around a bit. The Tacoma would have been creaking and flexing, and banging your head on the side pillars. The Grenny was silent and smooth, as to be expected from a new vehicle. The only really irritating take away was that coming from a manual transmission, the manual gear up and down shift on the BMW shifter feels backwards. I repeatedly shifted up when I meant to shift down. I got it by the end of the drive, it was just surprising. I intentionally took the worst lines and steepest approaches on the course, and never once drug the frame or spring mounts, nor touched the front skid plate. Again, the road was not that difficult, but the clearance felt good, and the visibility over the front of the hood, which is bad in a 1st gen Tacoma, and terrible in every year after that, was quite good over the nose, and around the front corners. The blind spots around the rear axle area are significant, and will be tough in Atlanta traffic. As it was, cornering tightly on narrow trail could easily lead to dragging the last 1/3 of the truck around a tree if not paying attention.
I took the opportunity near the end of the dive, when the cooling fan was roaring (and it is loud) to try out the wading button. Having read the engagement procedure previously, I knew it was a long press, then a confirmation press to turn it on. On the long press, a confirmation message showed on the screen, which had to be acknowledged then I pressed the button again. Another screen message. I'm not totally sure that I successfully engaged it. I would really have liked to see the button LED blink during the confirmation stage, then go steady when confirmed, but the LED just goes on or off. It might be a matter of me not reading/comprehending the manual.
I also tried the descent control/crawl control/whatever its called cause I'll never use it in real life. It defaulted to 3mph, which was way faster than I would have liked, particularly for really difficult terrain. I later learned from Chrissy that her driver explained that if you engage it while moving, it uses your current speed. If you engage it while stopped, it defaults to 3mph, and you can change that with the cruise control up/down controls. I wish i had more time to play around with that.
I noticed that the default display while in 4wd, which has the digital tilt and pitch gauges, also has a digital compass display in between the two gauges. Kind of makes the optional compass on the console redundant. Maybe we can get some aftermarket love there for something else- like the red trailer brake controller.
Chrissy's coach confirmed that the entertainment system will have wireless carplay, but the android is plug in only. She also thought the screen was pretty busy, even for 4WD mode, but admits, after using it for a while it's no more complex than her battery/hybrid Rav4 display.
I took a long time poking around the truck up on the rack, I'll make another thread about some of those findings, but I'll put them here so my stuff is all in one place. I had questions about the oil flow for the transfer case/transmission. There are oil cooler lines coming from the back of the transfer case. This seemed strange to me, and the reps didn't have an answer. I wonder if the xfer case has its own cooler, which seems unlikely, or do the transmission and transfer share oil, and the pump runs the lines to the back of the transfer case? The lines run to the left front cooler behind the bumper cowl. Regardless, they look easy to remove for service. The transmission oil filter (the entire bottom panel) is completely unobstructed for service. No wrestling around a frame crossmember to swap it out, and plenty of room to work. It's a 150k miles service, but nice to know it won't be too hard to do. On a related note, there are no skid plates currently behind the front nose plate- The starter is easily accessible, the oil filter is done from the top, so no drama there. The transmission is well above the frame level, so the odds of banging the plastic filter are unlikely, but some will probably want a skid plate. The Catalytic converter is also very accessible- gonna need a hard to remove skid plate for that one as well. The 24 gal fuel tank seems like the lowest point, but we were assured it has a skid plate of its own. Luckily, there are loads of unused frame mounting points, flanges with holes, that just seem well designed for adding skid plates and other under body things. Another thing I seem to do frequently is swap rear shocks. The shock towers are standard on the axle end, but a little strange on the top frame side- At first look, it seems like there isn't enough room to remove the bolt from the top hanger, but after some poking around, it looks like the whole shock mount may unbolt from the frame with two more easily accessed bolts, then you can remove the shock mount from the shock on the bench. Nice from a maintenance perspective.
Overall, we were very impressed. I didn't have that many questions, as much of them have been hashed out here on the forum.
Oh, we did ask about the ability to order just the base model instead of the trialmaster or belstaff editions. Wes (?) did seem to think that you would still be able to order the base model, which was good news for those absolutely constrained by budget. I might take that with a grain of salt, however.
