Potential Future Tacoma Owner in Chicago

Hello everyone! I don't own a Tacoma yet, and I've never owned a truck before. My first car was a '98 Subaru Outback (handed down to me with over 200,000 miles, and driven by me to 287,000 miles) before I sold it because I bought, brand new, my current 2015 Subaru BRZ (currently up to 82,000 miles). Been a lot of fun owning this thing, and I've had a lot of fun working on it over the years. It's my year-round daily driver here in Chicago, so it gets covered in salt in the winter, ice raced on the frozen lakes of Wisconsin, and generally hooned in all of the snow storms. In the summer it gets autocrossed (3 time class STX champion!). Done pretty much all the work on it myself. It has coilovers, LCAs, camber plates, header and tune, catback exhaust, front BBK, a whole bunch of other stuff (including some fun truck-like mods such as a 20" light bar behind the grill, and a set of train horns). Also have my winter wheels, my summer wheels, and my autocross wheels (complete with a tire trailer, which I also built myself using a Harbor Freight chassis.)

The BRZ will be paid off in October, and shortly thereafter (most likely next year) I'll be looking to acquire a 2nd vehicle, and I'd like to do something on the opposite end of the spectrum. A mid-sized truck is what I'm looking for. I've been reading a lot into overland builds, and I kind of want to build my own mid-sized zombie apocalypse/overland/whatever rig. Or, you know, at least have something that makes trips to IKEA easier (my girlfriend has an STI, which is bigger, but she's looking at getting a Miata or a Lotus... so ONE of us needs to get something useful!) Initially I was going to wait for all of the redesigns to come out since everything in the mid-sized segment is a bit dated. However, there is something to be said for getting the tail-end of a long production run, especially if my end goal is some sort of bug-out vehicle, so I'm thinking a 2021 Tacoma might be a great way to get something with all of the kinks worked out, but still with enough creature comforts to not make me feel like I'm buying a new truck from 2012.

With that said, can someone point me to a good thread that would help me learn about any common 3rd gen Tacoma issues? I've been doing some research and have seen things related to transmissions, etc... but all of that seems to be in the earlier "3rd gen" years, so I'm wondering what kinds of issues still exist on the latest model years (to the extent that anyone knows.) The only reason for me to get a 3rd gen (with stuff like rear drum brakes *gasp!*) over an upcoming 4th gen would be for reliability sake, so just want to know what issues haven't been ironed out yet. Any pointers would be appreciated!

In the meantime, here are some BRZ photos

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Welcome to the forums! I love the autocross trailer, way cool!

 

It is a good truck. Just test drive it extensively and decide if you like the transmission. No major issues with mine.

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Welcome to TW

 

Welcome. Beautiful BRZ. As a fellow autocrosser I'm surprised you're worried about drum brakes unless maybe you're planning to run your taco in solo trials? 100K+ on drums still better than 60K rotor/part kit/caliper on frozen/rusty rotors IMO.