If you're buying from a private party, then depending on where you do your banking, you can go into your bank and tell them you're in the market for buying a used car, the price range, etc. and then they can give you a "promissory note" good for up-to whatever amount you were approved for. The promissory note then works pretty much like a check, so you can go shop/haggle and if you find something good and are ready to pull the trigger, you fill in the amount and hand it over...

That said, I don't know what your savings/retirement/investment account situation is, so it's hard to tell you to go out and get a loan...especially "in these times". If you have some money put away in a 401K or something and its making decent money (let's say 7 or 8%), then getting a low interest loan might make sense; a loan will keep more of your money available to invest and your investment is "outpacing" your loan. If what you have is just a chunk of money in a savings account making like 0.025% interest, it might make more sense to save what you need to buy outright, or to be able to pay a large portion of the vehicle cost as a down payment.

I hope that makes sense. I'm not a finance guy though, and there's plenty of good advice on here besides mine.

My closing advice is to just save like $1500-2000 for an NA or NB Miata and have fun doing all the stuff a 4Runner can't do until it breaks or you get bored. Then you can sell it to a youngster for probably 80-85% of what you paid, and the fun you'd have had would be well worth the $400 or so you'd be down in the end