Car & Driver's "In-Depth Review" of the 2017 Tacoma

Toyota trucks have always been mediocre in the design department, not just the 3rd gen.

 

I had a Colorado, only kept it 8 months is was cramped and cheaply made

 

Utilitarian doesn't necessarily mean crap...
I'd consider things like a Mog, original hummer, Series I or II landrover, early jeep etc to be utilitarian.

 

Don't want to start an argument over the Frontier, but it's not that bad. They are solid trucks with better reliability than the GM products or the 3rd Gen (according to CR).

 

I test drove the baby duramax in a Colorado. I'd personally get a Canyon over the 'rado. I just prefer the GMC styling. I agree the interior was not appealing to me but not sure cramped is a descriptor I would use. If anything the Tacoma interior feels more "form fitting" the Colorado felt roomier to me. I wish they had that engine & transmission combo (or a manual) in the Tacoma though. The acceleration/power band/shifting felt much smoother.

 

Haven't heard it was a problem and failing other than a noise for some that listen closely. Link ?
Really think Toyota is pushing out 500000 defective diffs ?

 

Yeah, but its a chevy, so.....

 

If you like it then he is against you. If you hate it he wants you to join his fan club of naysayers.

 

If I was to buy a full size today it would be a Silverado or GMC. Those trucks are beautiful inside and out and my last GMC Truck was problem free (to be fair I only had it just over 3 years and for about 40k miles) but I have plenty of hunting buddies who all drive full sizes and travel all over the country in their Chevys and GMCs racking up 10's of thousands of miles traveling to National Trials (bird dog competitions) and I have yet to hear any major issues other than the usual maintenance. I think GM really stepped up the quality in their trucks over the last 10 years.

 

Meh.... not much into fan clubs or band wagons,.... I just really am digging this truck, it has been great so far. No complaints here.

 

Yeah, I see quite a few GMCs here, very little Chevys, but mostly Fords, F150s, FX4s , not sure why , really . There is also quite a few 2nd gen tacomas around here, I see a few 3rds gens here and there, but alot of 2nd gens.

 

Not at all I was using the SR as an example of the most "utilitarian" of the trims for the Tacoma

 

People forget that 99% of truck owners drive on the street every day as a daily driver and don't Offroad aside from a packed dirt trail to get to a camp ground or on the beach. Having car like comfort and drivability is an important factor to most.

 

I knew that, just fucking with ya !

 

as far as the howling diff issue, I think Toyota corp has analyzed a diff that was removed from a owner who had the howling and it came back within spec and now Toyota has stated the diffs are functioning properly and will not replace anymore due to the howling. only other option would be have an 3rd party expert analyze the 3rd member and see if the results are different from Toyota corps

 

So I have had a couple of meetings with the Toyota Regional Engineer on this issue and he did tell me that the rear diffs that they're replacing are being sent into their engineering "lab" for inspection and the tolerances are coming back within "spec" However he did admit the noise was a problem and it is something they were working to resolve. Also just because something is within spec does not mean the specification isn't wrong. It could be an error in the design or the way the specifications were developed. Saying it is within spec just means they met the "on paper" definition or requirement of the way it was to be designed. That doesn't rule out the possibility that the spec or design was flawed to begin with...

The Government writes poor technical requirements all of the time... has billion dollar weapons systems built and then in test & eval phase (or once the operator gets a chance to use the system) they find out that the requirements were not interpreted correctly and then the tax payer gets to foot the bill for all of the reverse engineering, contract mods, and torn up track to make it right.

 

Well said indeed!

 

Then buy one

 

Toyota corp probably became aware of Dealerships replacing the 3rd members and receiving the bills and owners concerns,so they analyzed the rear to see if there is a issue that could cause a catastrophic breakdown and found none, so I would give them props for that, seems to be more of an annoyance to some than others. but at this time there has not been case where a rear failure can be linked to the howl noise, more rear failures have to do with heat (low gear oil) or the owners doing, only case I heard of that was a design issue in Pickups was the early Nissan Titan v8 where the power of the engine was too much for the rear diff to handle, I think it was eventually ironed out in the next generation Titans.

 

Speculation on our part.