At $4,000, Is This 1988 Toyota Truck 4X4 A Fair Deal?
Top Gear famously failed to kill a Toyota Pickup despite many creative attempts. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice 4×4 has a few holes in the bed but also seems far from dead. Let’s see how much life there is in the price.
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The 1984 punk aesthetic black comedy Repo Man parodied the then-popular “plain wrap” branding of grocery store products. In the movie, characters eat out of cans labeled “Food,” and invariably wash that down with gulps from cans marked “Beer.” The 2014 Maserati Quattroporte S Q4 we looked at yesterday offered a similar straightforward branding aesthetic, its name succinctly describing its form— that of a four-door saloon. That naming convention was the only simplistic thing about the car, as the seller warned that the buyer would be on the hook for new engine mounts, a replacement that could run into the thousands. Many of you thought that might be only the tip-top of the financial iceberg waiting to smash into a new owner’s bank account, making its $12,900 purchase price an untenable deal. The result was a 75 percent No Dice loss.
Yesterday’s Maserati carried the stigma of a rep for unreliability and expense of maintenance that couldn’t be overcome by the car’s aura and function. On the other hand, today’s 1988 Toyota 4X4 Pickup could outlive us all and not break a sweat—or anything else—in doing so. According to its ad, it already has 300,000 miles under its belt.
That ad describes the truck as a “Rare SR5 V6 4×4,” and says it “Still runs good for a 36yr old truck, 4×4 works.” That’s pretty much it for the description. The handful of pictures the ad provides do show the truck being in decent shape with no obvious rat holes in the frame rails or any missing parts.
There are some big rust holes in the sides of the bed, but those don’t affect its function and may actually make the truck faster and more fuel-efficient due to it being slightly lighter. A lift kit has been added, and the truck rolls on a set of deep-dish aftermarket alloys wearing Bala A/T Widetrack tires of indeterminate age. A brush bar adorns the nose, and a diamond plate toolbox is in the bed, likely negative the weight savings from the rust. Out in the back, the full-width bumper is remarkably un-bent and tops a trailer hitch.
The cabin looks super clean and features a split-back bench. A crack in the dash and some chalkiness of a few of the plastics seem to be the only age-related issues here. Notably, the cabin offers three pedals and a five-speed stick. That’s bolted to the 150 horsepower 3VZ 3.0-liter V6 on one side and a two-speed transfer case for the 4WD on the other. Manual locking hubs complete the latter. The seller doesn’t show us the engine, nor provide any of the truck’s history, only claiming its condition to be “fair” and its title to be clean.
Of course, this is an old Toyota Truck, which, as we all know, cannot be killed by fire, sea, or a building collapse. How bad could this one be? More importantly, would you pay $4,000 to find out?
What’s your take on this Truck based on its brief ad description and a few pictures? Does it appear intriguing enough that its $4,000 price might seem a deal? Or is there just too little to go on, even if this Toyota might just go on forever?
You decide!
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Don Michaels for the hookup!
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