A friend just bought a well used by clean 2004 Sequoia. Like a fellow member on here, he bought it mostly for its towing capability, and it will see mostly summer mileage towing his camper.
I volunteered to take him to pick it up. It was literally a little old lady selling it. Hilarious that she's barely 5' tall and driving this big beast around. She finally tired of the fuel bills and is taking delivery of a new 2019 RAV hybrid soon. She didn't think the Sequoia would sell so fast, so is without wheels, but her son is loaning her a car for a few weeks, so my friend could buy the Sequoia right away.
We took turns driving the Sequoia and my Highlander back to back. Thankfully given how icy our roads are, the Sequoia is on studded Nokian SUV tires. My impressions:
First, the Sequoia does feel like a truck, not an SUV. You can tell the difference right away between the crossover and the truck based model. The Highlander really does feel like a raised Camry wagon with AWD and the Sequoia feels like a truck with some extra body work.
Even though the Sequoia is on studded tires and was in 4WD, the Highlander just walked away from it on glare ice. The Sequoia would still motor away from anything 2WD, but it was no match for the HL. We took a super icy right hand corner and the Sequoia had to go much slower. The TRACS and VSC programs feel completely different despite the vehicles being the same model year, and the full time AWD of the Highlander felt far more sophisticated and able to search for every tiny bit of traction that there was. I'm not sure if the TRACS in the Sequoia simulates LSD at both axles the way it does in the Highlander.
Another disadvantage for the Sequoia on these ridiculous surfaces is the amount of low end torque. A nice feature a lot of the time, but not when you want to apply very light power. Even on studded tires it went into the TRACS easier.
The Sequoia is a lot heavier, and feels it. It feels heavy, but it also feels substantial. Tank like. If you can keep the rust at bay, these things feel like they're built to last 40 years. Not that the Highlander feels junky, but the Sequoia feels very stout.
The 4.7 and 3.3 couldn't be more different from each other. The 4.7 is not slow to rev, but not quick either. It's got lots of low end grunt and you can tell its tuned to pull things and haul stuff. The V-6 in the HL is much happier to rev and makes its power at much higher rpm. It also has a pronounced VVT-i spot.
Both have smooth automatics, they feel a lot alike. Both shift early, barely perceptible shits, and feel nice. The HL downshifts a bit easier, but that is needed to get the revs up for the smaller engine.
The Sequoia has 410K on it, and feels like it's got 100 on it. Starts and runs and drives very well. Impressive machines.