Quality between Tacoma & the competition

That's why you got such a good deal, 3.9% and 0 down for 72 months! They are making decent money on that loan, you wouldn't have gotten that truck at 34k OTD paying cash. Still not a bad deal though, compared to what I was being offered from local dealers on 13' Silverados.

 

got to tell you....
3.9 is not a good rate and to do it for 72 months on a truck is just asking for it....


my last truck was several thousand off sticker and 0% for the lone..

 

Did I say it was a good deal? Not all of us can pay cash for vehicles or have well established credit or large incomes. But thank you for pointing out the obvious. Big pat on the back for your 0% and thousands off. And loan not lone.

 

Yeah, 2% for 72 months is the going rate. So they are making a 1.5% margin for 72 months on $34k or about $3k additional profit. Seems about right if 1/3 to 1/2 of the 10k rebate is dependent on the financing. But of course just refinance in a few months and take the cash and run...

EDIT: More like 1.5k or 2k profit I guess. And depending on the amount down (zero in this case) and the credit history of the purchaser 3.5% isn't necessarily awful. Again, if it is just refinance a few months later.

 

I see you were keeping the light bulb manufactures in business as well. Its crazy how many bulbs my truck consumed, the electrical system just isn't stable and the grounding system on those trucks sucked. What's even worse is that everyone I know who has one of these trucks all had/have the same issues, Gm would never step up and help any owners out either. I can understand getting a lemon here and there but when all your trucks have the same reoccurring issues something is wrong.

 

Never owned a Chevy, but I drive a 2013 and 2014 1500 Silverado on a daily basis as we have GSA contracts to use them for work. The 2013 has about 20k on it and has already been sent off twice for repair due to engine problems. There is a lot of rattling and overall lackluster interior in the Chevy that makes me very content with my tacoma when i go home.

A gripe i have with Chevy's, to include the new Colorado, is the forgettable interior--both design and feel. Reliability/dependability is going to be something the Chevy and Colorado will have to work really hard at beating Toyota. But something like interior and overall 'driving experience' is the one thing every manufacture has a shot at with an all-new vehicle. In my opinion, they dont do well with the small things which makes me hesitate when purchasing a chevy. So, I will remain loyal to Toyota and the Tacoma despite what Motortrend says.

Picture for reference

 

I owned a '03 Silverado for 11 yrs prior to buying my '14 Tacoma. it was a good truck, extremely reliable, except for the "rusted-out" brake-lines. However, I really don't think the new gm "twins" are going to work out as well as my old Silverado. Grill shutters, water leaks, hvac problems....I hate all that annoying crap, back & forth to the dealer, especially after dropping $35k!! I'll stick with my new "10-year old" Tacoma.

 

Sorry - missed this. Kaizen is a Japanese term for continuous improvement. It's part of a Toyota philosophy that was, oddly, taught to them by an American after WWII. They ended up adopting it wholesale and beating the US manufacturers at the quality game.

Now everyone in the industry pays attention to the total quality thing, continuous improvement, Six Sigma, and a whole bunch of other manufacturing philosophies/techniques.

The trouble is that Toyota started to get bogged down in bureaucracy and cost cutting, like any mature organization. I think that GM is in the process of reinventing themselves - taking away control from the bean counters and giving it back to the engineers. I think Toyota is getting some reinvention under Akio Toyoda, but as with most Japanese companies, it is extremely conservative, so I don't expect rapid change.

 

You think the Frontier rides worse than the Tacoma? I've driven several and the ride is much better. Every car magazine that has written a review says the same thing.

 

Correct friends have them and they not only ride better but they have more travel in the rear so as not to hit and bounce off the bump stops if it is not a really bad bump.

I tried this when I was having problems on the wife's truck and mine.
used a tire marker and marked the bump stops where they hit and bottom out.

over a week his never hit the bump stops.

The wife's would hit a few days then not and the 3 days.
mine hit every day.
Wife's is a short bed
mine a long. I did have a tool bag jumper cables and a hitch. Along with a few other small things. But not loaded.

There is just not enough up travel in the rear.

 

I drove a 2015 DCSB Tacoma, and then 30 minutes later did the same thing to the Frontier. Night and day. The Nissan guy told me a lot of great things about the stereo, though.

 

I rode in my friends Frontier a few times. I didn't think much of it. And apparently, neither did he. It was a 2012 and he just traded it in for a leftover F150. He said the Frontier was giving him too many problems. My next door neighbor has a '13 Pathfinder. Higher level trim. Again, I'm not impressed with the quality or ride. I did see the new Murano at the car show I went to a couple of weeks ago. Nissan has definitely upped their game on the interiors. At least on that model.

 

I don't think it looks any worse than the tacoma's inside. And the outside IMO is much better than the newest Tacoma. The only think I am worried about with the chevy/gmc is the poor reliability and recall history. I'm not saying these new ones are as bad as before, but they'll have to prove themselves. I think Toyota might have the opposite problem, they are living on their history and don't feel like they need to prove themselves anymore.

 

I sat in a new Colorado and Canyon at a local new car show a week or so ago. My first impression when I got in, everything looked and felt cheap. Not at all what I was expecting for a new, updated truck. The Colorado was only a LT model, and the Canyon was not the top of the line either. (Kind of wonder why the dealers didn't bring a Z71, unless they didn't have one). I felt like my '13 Tacoma Sport was nicer and better quality. And the quality of the Colorado / Canyon really surprised / disappointed me because I had just sat in the new Impala and Malibu, and they were really nice.

If you've seen them in person and think they're better, that's cool, everyone's entitled to their opinion. It just wasn't the "feel" I got.

 

When did they start manufacturing 3G Tacomas and start selling them? I hav'nt seen them out there yet.

 

Lets not go there and put GM and quality in the same sentence shall we. I can say that and actually speak from experience. I have owned two GM's in my personal vehicle side and at work I drive nothing but Silverado's. and Tahoe's.

Where shall I start? The very sticky ignition cylinder problem or the transmission harshly shifting into second and third gear issue at anywhere from 60-80,000 miles, ultimately forcing itself to go into limp home mode and starting from second gear? Lets not get into the failing master switch controls at the drivers side or the cheap lighting where the plastics and reflectors are literally breaking off inside the headlight housings. Mind you all these vehicles have less then 80K and cannot keep themselves together to save their lives.

I am all for north american vehicles and frankly I would buy one if they were built of better quality, but after driving a 2014 Ram and owning and driving GM products regularly and hearing the countless horror stories of Ford and working on them first hand. I'll stick to my (over engineered for it's application) import vehicle which will hold itself together much longer then 60,000 miles.

 

I've had 7 Toyota trucks in my life from 1987-2014. I recently trading my 2013 DCSB w/ 15,000 miles because of the numerous issues that I had during my short period of ownership. Right off the bat, I had the driveline vibration when approaching a stop (also known as a shudder).. per the TSB, they fixed it but it never went away. It got better yes, but never went away and became especially noticeable when the truck was loaded down or when I was towing something.

Next was an incessant creak near the windshield on uneven roads. Turns out that Toyota missed a weld on the firewall and they wanted to remove the dash to sort it out. I knew that a dash removal might open up a whole Pandora's box of other problems, so I scoured the internet to discover that someone else had the same problem, and that you could solve it by accessing the firewall through the front fender liner and add liquid wrench or a penetrating oil to the weld joint which would eliminate the creak. This is what the dealership did, and the problem was solved.

Next, a clunk under the floorboards developed every time I let up off the gas around town. The tech rode with me, and heard it, but they never could fix it after 3 trips to the dealer.

Then I had rattling around the dash again. Brought it in and they packed the dash with padding to make it go away.

Next I mounted up some new tires on new TRD rims and had a vibration at highway speeds. No big deal.. I've had this before on other trucks so I just brought it in for another balance session. Still didn't fix it. After 3 sets of different tires, and 9 different balance attempts (including on a Hunter 9700 machine) they could never eliminate the vibration.

I drove my '13 to the dealer and traded it on a '14.

My '14 was great until I swapped to snow tires. Vibration again. The tire shop gave up. The dealer got them balanced close, but the vibration was still there.

I sold the '14 with 4600 miles on it. Needless to say, I took a bath.

Here's a brief snapshot of my Toyota ownership:

1986 - 112,000 miles. Nothing but oil, brakes, and tires.

1987 - I bought new and put 160,000 trouble free miles on it.

1992 - same thing with over 150,000.

1991 - 235,000 miles

1998 - 246,000 miles.

I've had a lot of Toyotas and they have generally been awesome.

But I'm convinced that something has changed, and I've abandoned the Toyota brand. It sucks, but in reality I think that what we all used to believe was unrelenting emphasis on quality at Toyota has been replaced with an emphasis on cost cutting and shoddy engineering choices. Not to mention that the NAV system and voice recognition system on both Tacomas was horrible (even when compared to a Subaru) but got even worse on the "new improved" version on the 2014. It's like the development engineers had never benchmarked anything that was already out there.

I don't like the look of the new Taco, but that's personal. It might grow on me, but that grill is really strange. Also the air dam on the front of the limited strikes me as the same form of short-sighted development that produced the stupidly long rigid mudflaps on the Gen II's that basically ripped off the first time that you drove down a rutted dirt road or drove over a curb.

The days of believing that Toyota holds a higher quality standard that domestics might be over. I have many family members and friends that own other brands, and many have less problems and issues than I did with both my recent Tacomas. Me? I was always the guy that dissed on domestic brands and believed that Toyota was the path to trouble free ownership. I don't believe that anymore. For obvious reasons.

 

I gotta say, one thing to point out that I noticed that highly irritated you was vibrations and your trouble tracking them down. There are several ways to avoid this, all of which worked for me. One of the many thing's I did was get lugcentric/hubcentric rims, this ensured virtually identical fit to stock style mounting. Next up, road force balancing. Regardless of the tire road force balancing will always get you in a vibration free zone at least in the balance portion of things.

One thing you have to understand is that the suspensions system (control arms, spindle assembly, and shocks) on these trucks were designed surprisingly light, but it is because of that they transmit a lot of feedback to you in the cabin, not necessarily a manufacturer fault, they just should had added weight onto it all, but the moment you swap out to stuff that is not perfectly fitting or overly heavy tires and rims you will trigger that feedback to hit you harder then they did in stock configuration. With all the stuff I have you would think I would too, but because I actually added weight onto the suspension as well as retained true-to-hub rims and perfectly balanced the tires using road force balancing, I have ZERO issues with excessive feedback. Matter of fact it drives like stock, just much better, and smoother.

 

All the rims involved were OEM Toyota wheels, and they were all mounted and balanced on a Hunter GSP9700 (road force balance) machine. Believe me - as an engineer and a auto geek, I've learned more than I want to know about tire balancing and the technology available today... Haweka adapters, etc...

All the tire shops (including the dealer) mentioned how sensitive the Tacomas were to imbalance... which tells me that they have a "reputation". While that might be the case, I don't know why Toyota would have made certain decisions regarding suspension design and alignment specs that would make it so difficult to achieve proper balance. It shouldn't be so hard to do something (change over tires) that I had done hundreds of times with other vehicles.

 

I think you need to upgrade your web browser. It isn't properly parsing [sarcasm][/sarcasm] tags.