2016 Tacoma

[duckhunter71]

Yeah, I'm starting to warm up to cruise control. One man's base model is another's high end...

It's just completely foreign to me to even think about leather in a pickup. Makes no sense. But I do tend to treat my trucks not all that much differently than a CJ5/7 or Wrangler, although just shy of actually straight-up hosing it out I have removed the plugs and trickled water in there. There generally trends to be a little less distinction about what is 'inside' and what is 'outside' with respect to my truck.

Understandable. I'm VP of a bank so I spend a lot of time shuffling around town with clients and coworkers, so I need a dual-purpose rig, I suppose. There's a lot to be said about someone who is content with a basic, honest-to-goodness 4x4. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them!

 

[DaveInDenver]

If a dealer is going to ask near sticker price 40K for these trucks the interior better be nicer than the 1985 Toyota I had back in the day. 40K sticker price they might as well put the Lexus interior in them given the difference in parts cost is so little it would be dumb not to put better quality interior bits in them.

I think I must have posted in another thread, but a 1994 SR5 V6 XtraCab cost about $20,000. When taken forward to 2014 with inflation that is about $32,000. So the price has ballooned to cover all the features and certainly the trucks themselves have been cheapened in some key ways. But OTOH, a 2014 TRD sticker price is I think $34,000, so in other ways we're getting quite a bit for our money and Toyota trucks have not been bargain basement priced for a long time. A 1978 FJ40 was something like $8,000 new, which is around $30,000 and those were absolutely nothing like a Cruiser now. The FJ40 made a base model DLX 3rd gen seem like luxury.

 

[calicamper]

I think I must have posted in another thread, but a 1994 SR5 V6 XtraCab cost about $20,000. When taken forward to 2014 with inflation that is about $32,000. So the price has ballooned to cover all the features and certainly the trucks themselves have been cheapened in some key ways. But OTOH, a 2014 TRD sticker price is I think $34,000, so in other ways we're getting quite a bit for our money and Toyota trucks have not been bargain basement priced for a long time. A 1978 FJ40 was something like $8,000 new, which is around $30,000 and those were absolutely nothing like a Cruiser now. The FJ40 made a base model DLX 3rd gen seem like luxury.

My 93 LC with factory leather, factory tint and metalic paint was $52,000 in 1993. Around here dealers are not selling Tacomas for much below window MSRP price its been like that for years. Toss in Taxes and your looking at a 40K rig easy.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Toss in Taxes and your looking at a 40K rig easy.

Yup. Exactly why we bought a used 2008. Even though they are a very stiff premium even used that makes the new truck seem hard to pass up, the total cost saved from start to finish is >$15,000. Even though I only saved maybe $9k on the sticker, when you add in the first couple of years of registration being higher, the insurance being higher, etc. it all adds up very fast.

My point was only that those old 3rd gen trucks and 1st gen Tacomas weren't exactly cheap at the time either. Although the value wasn't obvious on the showroom floor. They presented as very humble trucks. In fact a lot of the same things were said in 1995 when comparing a Pickup to a Ranger or S10 that people say now about the Tacoma against the Colorado. They did seem pretty basic in comparison then, too, and people said Toyota needed to get with the times. Heck, it was a big deal when Toyota when to IFS and was seen as a step forward then. Now is a different story, but IFS was Toyota just slowly following the market buzz.