I found my truck yesterday up in the SF Bay Area. 2022 Off-Road trim in dark gray with a manual transmission. 3200 miles on it when I picked it up. Here's a photo my
took with me and the sales associate handing the keys over. Don't worry -- I'll be removing the D rings from the bumper
I thought about waiting for the 2024 Tacomas to come out but I couldn't wait many more days to get a vehicle again. I'm not too worried about missing a deal though because of how hard it has been for me to find a truck that my extra long torso fits in. This truck is basically perfect for my height and is basically brand new. There is zero sign of any wear anywhere. There is still about a year and a half of warranty left on the truck with Toyota.
The out the door price was $45.5k ($40.5k price on the truck). The truck price was right in the middle of KBB for the vehicle. It came with a variety of accessories (not all that I wanted) from the previous owner and they were
not priced into the truck. It already has a tonneau cover so I can wait a bit before buying a topper. The windows and windshield are already tinted to a legal dark tint. It has tube steps (I know they're not sliders -- will be replaced and maybe I can sell these for a few hundred bucks). It has a little front winch bumper (I need to get a photo of it in good light but I think it's
this one) that I'm dubious about actually being useful -- maybe I can sell it when I put something different on later). And there's an LED light bar in the bumper that was wired into an aftermarket rocker switch in the cab. They just tapped directly off the battery for the LED light bar -- I looked through the wiring and did not find any evidence of a hack job so that's good but it is not on a keyed power source so it will stay on if someone forgets to turn it off. It's also got a rubber mat in the bed -- are those useful for anything? And it already had weathertech floor mats. There is a TRD skid plate which I assume is standard on these trucks?
Once it's light enough outside, I need to go through the truck to find an Apple AirTag that my phone reported being present overnight. I'm guessing it's from the previous owner. Hopefully it's not too much of a PITA to find. I got the below alert when I woke up this morning.
There is some funny convoluted tubing that the previous owner or original dealership installed in the front of the bed where they drilled through the front of the bed and just... stuck it through two holes. It doesn't go anywhere and I think was entirely done for aesthetics when you look forward under the tonneau cover. I'll see about getting a paint touch-up kit to paint the two holes so there won't be rust, and then I'll find some rubber plugs to put in the holes. Maybe someday the holes will be useful?
In terms of the purchase experience, it went very smoothly. I had requested more info on the vehicle the prior night and by 8am the salesperson had texted and emailed me (no phone call) the out the door price and other details. I told her I was going to another truck first and she said just let me know if you want to see this one. Once it was clear the other truck wouldn't work, I texted her and said we were on our way with an ETA. We showed up and the truck was ready to go so we took it out for a spin. It handled very well, everything worked as expected, the transmission was very smooth, and etc. My
also test drove it which is surprising because she had never been interested in test driving any of the other trucks we've looked at. The salesperson was nice, zero pressure, and was just along for the ride. Then the purchase process was very straight-forward. I felt the price was fair based on KBB and what I've seen of all of the other Tacomas I've looked at over the last two years. The finance guy tried to find us better financing than my credit union's pre-approval but couldn't, and oddly the dealership (BMW of Mountain View - an AutoNation network dealership) could not work with my credit union directly to finish that part of the deal. So I put a down payment on it and have five days to get the check from my bank to them or I'll just pay the rest in cash. The finance guy tried to sell us on an extended warranty but we declined considering the truck still has a year and a half of warranty left with Toyota and most of the other extended warranty stuff is covered by our USAA insurance. That was literally the only pressure in the entire process. Everything else was just waiting around for them to re-detail the vehicle, put a full tank of gas in it, and wrap up the paperwork. We walked in the door at 1130 and left at 230 with the truck. Then we went to IKEA a few miles away to get some meatballs and watch other couples fight about furniture.
Our salesperson said she usually sells 7-8 vehicles a week and the dealership usually sells 300-400 vehicles a month for the past year. She started working there a year ago and started doing sales 8 months ago. This dealership the second largest BMW dealership in the USA behind one in Houston, Texas. I'm pretty sure we bought the cheapest vehicle they had for sale based on everything else I saw them selling.
It was a constant stream of very well-off people coming in and buying very high end BMWs. The salesperson also said that basically every salesperson there is multi-lingual because of their clientele. She also spoke Spanish and other languages represented included Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Dutch, Hindi, a few other languages from India, Farsi, and a few other languages as well. She said it's not uncommon that they use Google Translate or similar to help communicate with customers who speak languages they don't have a salesperson to cover.
The salesperson looked up how the truck had come in to them because I was curious. It had been a trade-in for a new BMW SUV (I think an XM?). It had been available for sale for about 16 hours when I purchased it.
As we were leaving, there was another person coming in who was looking to test drive the truck. It appears that it was a popular one and I'm guessing it would have sold this weekend regardless of my purchase decision.
On the drive home I was struck by how quiet it is inside compared to basically anything else I've driven in the last few years which includes a lot of rental cars for work. I was not expecting that and hadn't realized how noisy so many car interiors can be. It's certainly a lot quieter than my old truck!
All in all I'm happy with how everything turned out which is about all I can ask for. It's more than I originally planned to spend but I fit in the truck and it drives quite well. And my
is happy which is the most important thing.
Now I have to start a build thread I guess
And I've got to come up with a new truck name
EDIT
I found the Apple AirTag. It was taped and glued with black caulking under the front seat. I'm going to contact the dealership to let them know in case this was a situation where an ex husband was trying to track his ex wife or something. I'm a bit surprised it's not standard operating procedure to sweep a car for trackers.
