Tacoma noob

Hello everyone I’m new to tacomas, but am looking to buy one. I joined this group to learn about them and their flaws. Would like to know the following.


- What years I should stay away from.
- Best trims for the price.( Ford guy so would like some comparisons to Xlt, Lariat, Platinum etc.)
- Which engines are better to look for.
- What to look for when buying used, such as certain years and their problems or common failures.
- Common issues most Tacomas experience
- How many miles is too many?
- How to know which are 4wd or not

Looking to buy something around the 20k range to give you guys and idea.
Thank you.

 

To answer most of your questions first we kind of need to determine what generation you want, 1st gen (95-04), 2nd gen (05-15), 3rd gen (16-23). Each has it's pros and cons.

Trim wise there's not alot of options, none would really line up with an equivalent Ford trim other than a base/SR being like an XL and an SR5 I guess you could equate to and XLT:

1st gen: Base, SR5, S-Runner, and TRD OffRoad.

2nd gen: Base, SR5, X-Runner, TRD Sport, TRD OffRoad, Limited (2013-2015), and TRD Pro (2015 only).

3rd gen: SR, SR5, TRD Sport, TRD OffRoad, TRD Pro, and Limited.

You can browse the brochures to see what was available in each year.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/tacoma-ebrochures-2001-to-2017.486957/

 

See above in Red.
You don't have your location on your profile... If you're in a rust-belt state, then you definitely want to be diligent about rust. This seems to be by far the biggest issue with Tacomas (seems every few days there's a post on here asking how much rust it too much, the majority of which end up being lost causes).

 

Thank you, I live in the south so rust isn’t too much of a problem here. I appreciate your time for the response.

 

If you have any other questions or find some potential candidates your looking at feel free to ask, I think you will find most people on here to be pretty friendly and helpful.