Pink elephants dancing under your earlobes

Yep, title has absolutely nothing to do with anything at all. I just figured it would be more entertaining to read than "HI! I HAVE NEW TACO! TACO IS GREAT! WHY IT DO THIS THING? NO WANT USE SEARCH."

So, "I HAVE NEW TACO!" and "IS GREAT!". Yay me! Right? (yes)

You can ignore the below stuff if you like. It's nice to be here. You have a pretty nicely organized forum. Thanks for having me. That's the TL;DR.

Still here? Story time:
I had been looking to downsize a little from a beat up 200k+ 2000 Accord and a 200k+ 1996 Ranger (manual - key point here since wife will not drive, does not like) to something that will still have the utility of my current truck (maybe more) and at least close to the same MPG as the ancient Accord. Ford had some really nice (completely BS) offers out their on their F150 with the 2.7 Eco-thing that honestly had me tempted. We did the test ride thing a few times and sat down for the "discussion" and my approach was always "give me the best price, right now, and I will buy it, right now. You can move onto the next person." The commission will be potentially lower, but that 30 minutes won't eat into the attack run on the next sucker. All the Ford dealers wanted to play around over the course of a few days/weeks. It's a ridiculous process where they try to get you to completely ignore the price and focus on what you pay per month. They try to not even include the final price. You walk away and they call you a day or two later with a "OMG, you won't believe what my manager is letting me price this at just for you" price (which is still crappy). I would be in an F150 if they allowed their current "rebates" to combine with their current financing offers, which are all promoted in conjunction with one another. It's shady as heck! I'm super glad that this didn't pan out because despite the cool crap that Ford is putting in it's vehicles these days, I don't trust their tech. Hiest in Initial Quality, or something like that.

We were pretty exhausted and fed up after a few dealers in a day and we were just relaxing at home. On a whim, my wife was looking through CarMax's site and found a 2016 Tacoma SR. 2500 miles. SR trim (with cruise control) and access cab and 6' bed. I started doing a little Googling. Yeah, that actually checks off everything that we were looking for. And a few more things. We headed over and checked it out. For a base model, this thing was pretty decent. 4cyl, 2wd (We're in Virginia and I think I used 4wd on my Ranger successfully once. The second time it had failed because the hubs had failed due to not being used). Gas mileage is about the same as the Accord. Payload and towing is on par with the Ranger. We slept on it, just to make sure and despite the CarMax rep's warning that it might get snapped up while scheduling an appointment at opening the next day.

Next day shows up, we arrive at opening. We check a few more things out. Wife drives it to make sure she's comfortable with it. Everything checks out.

Bought. The only worrisome part of the process was telling them to shoo away people who were looking at it while we finalized everything.

All that said and done, I'm super impressed with this thing. It's a base model, but it's got a lot going for it. Since it's a current year and it has stupid low miles, our credit union rated it as a new vehicle and beat CarMax's already low rates.

This is a great truck!

OK, that's all. I'm going to go back to lurking and researching now. Happy to be here, thanks for having me.

 

Based entirely on the thread title, I thought this was going to be some kind of Alcoholics Anonymous support thread.

 

Welcome BTW...

 

Welcome to TW! Nice intro.

 

Welcome and congrats!

 

Yeah, that's a distinct possibility. I think I was going for a kind of stream of consciousness via the predictive text on my phone. I also later realized that a simple "Taco Tuesday" would have worked just fine as a random title. Talk about a missed opportunity.

Here's a poorly lit evening snap of my new beast of burden. I'm still figuring everything out. I especially liked the links that were sent to me in the welcome message. There's a lot of useful info out for this thing. I'm very happy with this thing so far.

Thanks for the warm welcome.

 

tl;dr

didn't make it past the title of the thread

hi

 

I like the title you went with, I like your truck too!

 

A 2wd / 4 cyl is not a beast of burden by a long shot.

Welcome to TW.

 

Would you feel more comfortable with "pup of pulling".

It's a truck. Truck's gonna truck. It's just gonna do it on road, heh.

 

Nahhh... 'Grocery cart' will be just fine.

Carry on.

 

Like this?

 

I quit reading at "still here".

The title was so promising then I was epically let down. I now feel empty inside.

Meh...congrats on the new truck & welcome to TW.

Let me know when you start a thread bitching about a random noise or tire air pressure. I'm sure the thread title will be amazing.