Of all the criteria used to judge a pickup truck, functionality has always been our biggest yardstick. And while it used to be the size of the bed and the payload that largely determined a truck's function, today it seems the hot buttons are the cab size, number of doors, and accessibility to those doors.
For the first time in Four Wheeler history, every truck in our Pickup Truck of the Year test has four doors. This speaks volumes about the needs of today's pickup buyers and lends to speculation about where pickup trends are heading.
This does not mean traditional pickup truck strengths such as four-wheeling ability, load-carrying capacity, and good old-fashioned low-end torque simply got swept under the rug. Today's pickups must do it all and do it all well. So it's no surprise that our Pickup Truck of the Year test is based on those same all-encompassing standards. As always, any new or significantly revised four-wheel-drive pickup truck is eligible for our test. And for 2000, the contenders were the new Nissan Frontier Crew Cab, Dodge Dakota Quad Cab, Toyota Tundra, and Dodge Ram Quad Cab Off-Road Package. Here's how the chips fell.