How much for a new Tacoma?
- Thread starter Chris142
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1) Buy a horrible beater.
2) Drive (or tow) to the city of the desired dealership
3) Drive (or shove) beater into a ditch, or park it in the slums and leave the keys
4) Buy a replacement and drive it home.
If you don’t file an insurance claim on the beater you haven’t committed insurance fraud, but I don’t know what the rules are for circumventing emissions regs
Don’t forget to register and insure it first, so that you can prove that it “broke down” while out of state…
Nicer, maybe. Not better.
A loose drain plug is a terrible thing…
When I bought my last new car four years ago I wrote an email to 10 dealerships within 50 miles and listed exactly what I wanted, made clear I did not need a test drive, and asked just for their best price and availability. Yes my phone rang off the hook starting five minutes after sending, and yes I did receive 74 emails over the next three days, but in the end I got 8 quotes, and they differed by $2,000 high to low. I made sure all of the dealers knew that I was soliciting quotes from nine other dealers, and by setting up this competitive environment I feel I got a good price (15% below MSRP), sort of like an auction.
They are so underpowered that my friend regeared manual Tacoma once he installed BFG KO2’s. So, yeah, as long as you are running tires like Michelin Defender, it will be fine.This is the extent of my offroading...
So yea, no need for gears.
I don't keep a truck long anyways. Gonna see what the 4th gen does and might get a 2026.
Yea, it could use more power, I'll definitely say that. Buy, it's a decently reliable powertrain that does what I need it to. I don't plan on a lift or bigger tires.
Most people don’t utilize their full potential but they put hard core A/T tires. And that is where problems start.
Other than that, it does its thing good, same like 4Runner. One just has to know what exactly is buying.
Stock tire size in a good mild A/T tire is great in the snow. Thing would go up and over the snow covered mountain like nothing.
Mild AT like Yokohama G015, Falken Wildpeak AT etc is ok. Problem is step up.
Snow? They are ok. Not the best thing, but it is truck, it is not dynamic tour de force. They do OK IMO. If snow is priority, there are much better vehicles.
In summer they are popular here. In winter, not very common in local ski places.
Try the Costco car buying program. Probably worth buying a membership if you don't have one.
Also don't be tempted by a cheap '16 model as those were the first year of the current generation and had a lot of serious issues. I'd probably skip '17 too although they were better.
I think the next generation will look like a Frontier based on pics I've seen. Maybe even check the Frontiers out for a comparison.
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For the snow we get around here, it does just fine. Yes, our Subaru seems to handle the snow far better, but the Taco does the job as well.
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In 2019 I tried that and I was extremely dissapointed. Maybe it was just here, but there was one dealer, 100 miles away, and he said I had to show up and show him my Costco card for him to give me a price. How is that any better.
Costco auto insurance on the other hand has been a great deal so far.
Nick1994
$100 site donor 2024
Chris keeps his cars too long.
Both will make it at least to 150K miles and one will do it while delivering nice handling and a comfortable interior and it's not the Tacoma.
Most likely the Tacoma will be ready to do another 150k without a bunch of work needing to be done, and is probably a good candidate for increasing in value being a manual trans 4wd truck. At some point those will be gone, and a more disposable midsize GM auto truck will be near worthless. Has any GM midsize truck had half the residual value of a tacoma at 10+ years?
I agree if he was leasing it for 5 years, then sure get the comfy one, but for long term ownership?
I don't know, I've driven and ridden in newer, low-mileage Tacomas and they're honestly awful. If someone gave me a brand new Tacoma for free I'd tow it to a Ford or Chevy dealer and trade it in on something else haha.
JHZR2
Staff member
I was going to say - doesn’t Costco have a car buying service? I’d have to guess that there’s some dealer in CA or AZ that would take let in the program and be looking to move a vehicle.
AZ is no good. The dictatorship of CA requires you to buy cars only from CA stealerships if you want to register them.
