On Location at an off-road park in the 2016 Toyota Tacoma

Toyota has a lot riding on the Tacoma pickup truck. Not only is the truck, affectionally known among fans as the Taco, the best-seller in its segment, it also handily outsells its larger sibling, the Tundra. In other words, nowhere in the Toyota Kingdom does the pickup light shine more brightly than in the midsize segment. The launch of Toyota's heavily updated Tacoma for 2016, then, is a really big deal.

We took Toyota up on its offer to come sample the new 2016 Toyota Tacoma just outside of Seattle, Washington, in an attempt to find out if the latest version of the midsize truck has what it takes to stay on top of legitimate new competition from General Motors. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that Toyota's reign atop the midsize truck sales charts seems likely to stay strong in 2016.

We have lots more in the way of driving impressions and opinions on the 2016 Tacoma coming soon, but in the meantime, we hope you enjoy this video outlining the ways we managed to put this truck to the test. Dirt, mud and gravel, steep grades both up and down, huge stacks of boulders and even a deep pit of loose sand all conspired to make a formidable obstacle course for Toyota's latest pickup truck, and we had our cameras pointed at the action the whole time. We hope you enjoy watching!