Toyota: Why pay for resale value if you never intend to re-sell? (yes, I changed the title)

I do agree with you here. I want less electronics in my truck. Another reason I SASed mine and put a manual T case in it. When I was in Japan we drove a brand new landcruiser 70 4 door truck. It might as well been a 1980 vehicle. And I was in love. Can't get one here tho, so I'm modding my truck to my liking.

 

This is all the closure I needed.

@kayakingguy best of luck with your future car buying, may you find the best, cheapest, strongest ect ect ect vehicle you can buy soon. Good luck. BTW you made @ChadsPride turn into every single color in the rainbow in the span of 14 pages. Have a good 1. Peace

15 pages

 

Well put, hopefully op will find something that suits him.

 

I wonder how it will end when you startle a grizzly bear because your dirt bike is quiet. I suspect not good for you but very good for the bear. I would rather give some notice that I am coming, but not enough that I can be heard 6 miles away. There is a balance.

 

been there not fun when your bombing around a corner and there's a black bear on the trail just staring at you. made a new trail feature at whistler that day. I call it the do or die run.

 

And a new obstacle called the dodge the doo doo

 

I would shit myself if that was chasing after me.

 

I was chased on my mountain bike by a black bear several years ago at Squaw

 

my buddy and I were shaking uncontrollably when we stopped at the next trail head. top 5 scariest moment for sure.

 

Holy balls. What a read.

 

Funny shit

 

That def helps you forget about sending a scary feature when you got something like that on your ass. Wait man was that you in the vid? That shit was legendary on PB!

 

Only if you want to man, I dont mind constructive criticism on topics as thats how we as a people only get smarter.

 

So you are here just to vent about the insane high retail of our trucks? The resale is a good thing....

 

my go pro died like 3 runs before it happened. never fails the gopro never catches the good shit

 

First, yes, it is ridiculous. I bought my 2007 Prerunner for $17,000 new. In 2015 I traded it in for $15,000 (yes, trade in value) and they put it on the lot for $19K. That's right, an 8 year old truck with 60k miles on it was priced for more than it was new.

Toyota used trucks are more expensive than they used to be for one simple reason.... more people want Tacomas every year than the number of trucks that are produced and the imbalance is huge and seemingly irrational. In a truly free market Toyota would build more to match demand and used prices would fall. That is what they do EVERYWHERE else in the world other than the US and even in the US with EVERY OTHER MODEL except the Tundra. To give you some perspective, Toyota sells over 5 million Hiluxes (international equivalent of a Tacoma) a year worldwide. It moves in and out of the top position of ALL vehicles sold in Australia (including cars), selling over a million a year there. Yes, they can and do crank out as many as they need to. Toyota has chosen to only build factory capacity for a few hundred thousand Tacomas a year for the US market. They are running 3 shifts but have no plans to add more capacity. Why such seemingly irrational behavior that doesn't exist on other models or for trucks in other markets? Simple: US government CAFE standards penalize them if they sell too many as it affects their average gas mileage mix. (Hint: Australia doesn't have these standards, nor do any south American, African, Middle Eastern, or other countries where the Hilux is extremely popular).

From that point a lot of dominos start to fall. If you are Toyota and you are purposefully supply constrained, you can't make more money by building more Tacomas, but you can try to make more money per truck by turning the trucks from work vehicles into premium products at premium prices. Losing sales because of the prices? Who cares, you are selling all you are allowed to build anyway. Can't keep an SR manual on the lot for 5 minutes? Nope, don't build them, each one you sell subtracts from a higher margin truck. Sell more bells and whistles. Product marketing 101. If demand exceeds your capacity, raise prices. As the new ones become more expensive and demand still exceeds supply, that unfilled demand turns to the used market and drives up prices there. You ask why so many Tacoma owners have the balls to ask so much for their trucks? You tell me: if there is someone out there who is willing to pay 25K for a used Tacoma with 100,000 miles on it because the new equivalent is $35,000, why should I sell it to you for less?

So, if you want to know the root root cause of why you can't find the cheaper used Tacoma that you want, look no farther than your own US government looking after you.

On a side note: having demand exceed your production capacity by such a large amount has other ramifications. Why bother adding features that come on every $25k vehicle on the market to a $35K vehicle? It won't help you sell more. Quality/recall problems? No worries. Demand can cut in half and still exceed what you can build. Yep, explains a lot.