Many car companies love cramming the occasional wacky feature into their vehicles, but Toyota isn’t generally seen as one of them. The Japanese manufacturer is best known for plain, functional, and affordable vehicles like the RAV4, Corolla, and Prius.
So it may surprise you to learn that, for a few years at least, some Toyotas came with a dedicated “Party Mode” button. The button, which Toyota positioned just to the right of the steering wheel, was included as standard on 4Runners built between 2010 and 2013.
Toyota seemingly snapped out of “party mode” itself and removed the feature during the vehicle’s 2014 mid-cycle research. Or more specifically, added a new audio system and didn’t bother carrying the button over.
What did the “Party Mode” button actually do?
The fifth-generation 4Runner was intended to be a bit more “fun” than the SUVs that preceded it, and Toyota designed it with activities like tailgating in mind. This meant adding a set of speakers to the rear liftgate.
Those speakers worked whether “Party Mode” was engaged or not, but pressing the button did enhance them quite a bit. For a start, bass response was elevated. The button also shifted the sound balance towards the back of the vehicle, boosting the liftgate speakers’ output while reducing it at the front.
So the idea was pretty simple. You’d rock up to a tailgating event in your 4Runner, pop the liftgate up, lay out your burgers, crack out your cooler, then blast whatever we were listening back in 2010 out at full volume. Hopefully, the Arctic Monkeys or something, as you don’t want to be the guy ruining everyone’s evening with a Maroon 5 album.
It’s a little sad that Toyota flirted with the fun aspects of vehicles oh so briefly, before going back to business as usual within that very vehicle’s product cycle. Yes, it’s a little bit stupid, and few 4Runner owners will have ever used it. But the fact that the usually dry Japanese company tossed something quirky in there for the hell of it sums up what happier times the early 2010s were.
The closest thing to it these days is the feature Stellantis has on some vehicles, which boosts the audio when you accelerate. When another journalist and I stumbled across it on a Jeep drive, we spent about 20 minutes laughing our heads off before inevitably putting Freebird on.
It’s pointless, it encourages you to drive dangerously, and it’s the best thing I’ve seen on a car this decade. “Party Mode” was definitely a safer option, but both of these things are evidence that automakers need to learn to have fun again. People spend years of their lives sitting inside their cars. Let them have a laugh every once in a while.
