QUOTE(buttface96 @ Apr 19 2008, 02:09 AM)
1. Its NOT a 4x4
2. Gas milage is decent, not extravagent, but decent (about 17mpg) (V6 3.0 liter)
3. We were looking for a small light weight truck with low milage... I don't know if you've done any used car shopping for a lightweight small pickup here in socal, but this deal was a steal. Most decent tacoma's, s10's, frontier's, rangers, sonoma's, etc all were too expensive for us (0ver 11k for most decent vehicles) We spent about 4 months of searching for the right small pickup and this was it (especially since the dealer only wanted $7k for it, and it had under 60k miles on it, and test drove just fine.
4. Maybe if YOU searched around here for a decent light weight truck you might find something better;)
Rather funny that you say it's hard to find decent cars for sale in your area... when I was searching for my truck and my car I found oodles of ebay and craigslist ads for well priced vehicles in SoCal, enough that I considered flying out there to drive something back east.
I was in Chatsworth on business last week and as we drove by a lot with pristine used cars I lamented to my co-worker the fact that anything over 5 years old in the north east is rusted to junk and jokingly commented that I should open a used car dealership in NH where I do nothing but import cars from California. Heck there was even a Cherokee I saw with a for-sale sign on it in a mall parking lot that I seriously considered buying and driving back because of the cheap price and great shape it was in.
Even with the dire used car market in the north east I still managed to find a 99 Tacoma RC 4x4 for $7K which is exactly what I was looking for minus a few amenities that I would have liked. I'll admit that I got a good deal on my Tacoma, but most of the other ones I saw for sale were still only about 9-11K and I could have picked up an S10 even cheaper if I didn't hate GM so much
Toyotas cost more because they're worth more, and their worth more because they last longer, with regular maintenance you can easily get 225K miles out of one of their engines without any problems.... but I digress.
As for Gas Mileage I would hardly consider 17MPG decent... my lifted V6 Toyota with the engine running like garbage and in dire need of a rebuild got 18 and my current 99 Tacoma gets 23-27 depending on how I drive it and if I'm in 4x or not. anything below 20 is a gas hog IMO. the fact that this truck is RWD and still only get 17 is puzzling to me. "decent" would be over 24, and "excellent" would be over 30.
This might just be semantics but even the US Government considers anything below 22MPG to be a "gas guzzler"
http://en.wikipedia....Gas_guzzler_taxModern engine management can do fantastic things for fuel economy. For instance: My fathers Z06 corvette, a 5.7L V8, got 28MPG highway...
I'm not trying to be a dick, all-round it's a decent truck, but I don't see it has having any stand-out qualities vs similar vehicles on the market. If you like it, that's great, do let my car-snobbery get in the way of your enjoyment
If you don't mind my asking... what exactly are you going to use this truck for?