Originally Posted by shinobi13

My X5 (diesel) was an awesome vehicle until I hit 50K miles and the value tanked and then when I hit 90K miles and the mechanical/electrical gremlins decided to make a permanent home in the vehicle. The issues I had were too many to list but the weirdest is when I walked out to my car after work and all the windows rolled down on their own... not all the way open and all at different heights. The local dealership wanted to "band-aid" fix or ignore all the problems until after the extended warranty ran out at 100K miles. I had an independent BMW shop look it over and they gave me a list of warranty fixes that should be done, but the dealership service department wouldn't consider their recommendations. Enough was enough and I traded it in at 94K miles for my 4Runner.

Originally Posted by Sonoran_Desert

Gremlins is a good term for coming out at end of work day and finding all the windows rolled down at different heights. Not sure what I would have done with that.

A friend who bought 2019 X5 had the well known and very dangerous software issue which takes over the steering when temperatures drop outside. NTSB got involved in this one. Hopefully you will have your 4Runner 200+ miles worry free.

Originally Posted by serpico6969

OK so grab a beer or a scotch or a glass of wine if that’s your thing and sit back and let me tell you a story.

Stay with me, I’m going to go back-and-forth and maybe in a couple directions but I promise it’ll be entertaining and of course since all of you are big car guys you may agree with a lot of it and maybe not so much with some of the things but here goes. A lot of you guys know a lot more about SUVs than I do so please chime in and throw some things around.

Did anyone ever think there would come a day where we would fork down $57 big ones for 4Runner ? Let me say that number again, it was not a typo $57,000. That’s US dollars by the way, not pesos or bitcoin! Unbelievable. But here’s the cold hard truth. If you want an 4runner army green TRD pro you got a pay to play and that’s just the bottom line. And by the way of course 57 grand I mean out the door. It’s MSRP with a few options and of course sales tax, but this will be pretty similar around the country.

So let’s take a couple of steps back.

I may have mentioned in an earlier post this is kind of my last nice car if you will. I’m getting older as we all are and figured for my swansong I would get something I really loved and was special and would last for years and would always be sought after. I have always loved Toyota as a brand and I owned a 4th Gen 4runner SR5 back in 2005.

So:

$57,000 bucks buys a lot of nice suvs. I think we all agree on that.

But to be honest, there aren’t that many realistic choices that fill my bill described above. Let me tell you what I mean.

Here is what I considered before I pulled the trigger on my TRD pro.
Let’s visit Germany first shall we

I could get a brand new X3, I could get an Audi Q5 and definitely a very lightly optioned Porsche Macan.

Now all these are very nice let’s be honest, but to me there’s just something lacking in long term ownership.

The X3 is made in the US, more on that in a second. The Q5 is nice but just eh heh and the Macan is awesome . I just don’t know that these Germans will go for the next 12 years and 250,000 miles. Also I do know that to service them it’s really expensive meaning oil changes are like $200. And as we all know generally speaking just maintaining and doing work outside of warranty maintenance on these German beauties is very very expensive.

Let’s go back to the BMW being made in the US. I love our country as much as anyone. I could not be prouder to be an American. I love apple pie , baseball and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I have traveled the world and we are the luckiest to be able to live in the good old US of A There is no better place on earth. However boys, that being said we just can’t make cars. I mean we make OK cars right, but let’s be honest there’s just a huge difference between the Japanese and German cars and our cars.

I am not an engineer so don’t ask me why. I’ve rented a GMC Yukon and Ford Explorer and a million other made in the USA suvs while on business trips and while nice for a few days I would just not want to own one. The build quality is just so so, the reliability long-term is just so so, and the resale values are just not strong. I know this is a personal opinion but the German and Japanese cars just feel different than sitting in the Chevy Tahoe or the Ford Expedition or a Jeep Cherokee or GMC acadia or Chevy traverse or Buick Enclave or Dodge Durango. You get the picture.

So where was I? Let me get back to the Germans. I could’ve taken my 57 grand and bought those cars but personality wise as well as my reasons listed above it’s just not me, so let’s move on, shall we...

So where else can I take my 57 grand.

The Acura MDX and RDX are both very nice but kind of boring and not really rugged. The Volvo XC 90 is really nice but again kind of vanilla and has spotty reliability.

The Subaru outback and Ascent are both nice but I don’t live in Vermont or Colorado and they just don’t do it for me. I know these are both high quality rigs but just not for my taste.

I may have told you guys I owned the land cruiser in a previous post and yeah probably if I added another 10 grand I could probably get a-year-old Land Cruiser but I just wasn’t in love with it. The brakes were mushy, the gas mileage was horrible, and I didn’t feel confident driving it. Now I’ll be the first to admit it’s an icon and a work of art and anybody would be lucky that owns one but it’s just not my flavor.

Nissan Pathfinder is a joke (what happened here Nissan?), we already talked about the Ford Explorer. I’m not buying a Kia or Hyundai so I’m not gonna spend any time on them.

And yeah I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch but let me jump to the jeep wrangler. I actually owned the hard rock 2 door rubicon 2015. I went out and celebrated the day I sold it. Yes I know it’s incredibly capable and fun and cool, I get all that. But it was louder than sitting front row at a Metallica concert, the long-term reliability was as shaky as the Bolivian stock exchange and the drive was really rough even on perfectly smooth roads. If this is not your daily driver then it’s an awesome rig but if it’s your main ride I actually can’t believe people drive these things every day. And by the way gone are the days of a $25,000 jeep wrangler. These babies are very very expensive as we all know. Like high 40’s into low 50’s expensive for the one you want as they say.

So back to the 57 grand for a 4Runner. Of course the trd Pro off-road premium can be had for about 42 grand out the door give or take. It’s an incredible truck for the money no doubt but I really wanted the army green trd pro and you got to buy what you want because buyers remorse is the worst.

By the way can I just take a couple minutes and address these high crazy prices in California and Colorado etc. for the trd Pro. Every now and then I come around to a post or comment of somebody is being charged thousands of dollars over MSRP in Colorado or California. There are no checkpoints when going to another state, no visa required, no passport required.....

I am definitely not the smartest guy in the room but do I have to really tell you guys what I would do. For the record I live in Florida so it’s a non-issue. We have so many dealers and no one charges over MSRP because it’s just not an incredibly wealthy state and you have 20 dealers within 3 hours drive anywhere. Of course there is a lot of money in Florida but what I mean is that in California it’s par for the course. Whether buying a Porsche, a BMW or a top-of-the-line trd pro, the California dealers can charge pretty much whatever they want because They have 20 people behind you lined up to buy them if you don’t. That is not the case in Florida and many other states.

So if I live in Denver or LA and I want a trd pro at msrp I’m going to go to let’s call it "less wealthy" state like Arizona or Nevada or New Mexico. It’s very easy people, you catch a first flight out pay msrp for your new trd Pro and drive it back and stay overnight at a hotel. So big deal it costs 400 bucks to do that with the flight and hotel and gas versus $5000 over MSRP. I’m sure I’m not the only genius to lay this out for everyone but this is not that complicated.

Now let me shift gears to what it takes to be number one on the list and actually buy a model that everyone wants desperately ie. Army green trd pro 4runner.

The moment I heard or I should say read about the army green I knew I wanted one. And I was going to do everything in my power to get one.

You have to be strategic and proactive and absolutely relentless in order to make that happen. I sent an email to seven dealerships all over Florida, one in Georgia and one in Alabama telling the general manager I was ready to pay cash and add some options to the army green if they could get me the first one.

Right away several of them emailed me back put me on the list and told me I didn’t even need to give a deposit until it was time, meaning prices announced and they had an allocation. But guess what, I actually insisted.

Now I’ve got some dialogue and rapport built up as they sent me to the Internet Manager and he and I went back-and-forth and I did this with multiple dealers. Of course I wanted to buy from my local dealer (great guy, will call him by first name only Josh) but was willing to drive a few hours obviously if he couldn't get me one.

I would email them literally every two weeks asking if they’ve heard anything. I don’t care how pushy I came across I don’t care how sick of me they were, I would always do it in a nice way but I wanted them to know how badly I wanted the army green ted pro.
Furthermore I actually drove to several of the dealers and met the Internet manager and shook hands and sat in his office just to put a face to a name so they knew I was for real.**** But, many people don’t know this, the inventory manager is the wizard behind the curtain. They are the ones that get the trd pro for you. So at each dealership, I met the inventory manager and put a face to a name and was super nice ( I am a really nice guy anyway).

These are the extreme measures you need to go through if you really wanted to get the first army green trd pro. I don’t believe they will make that many and it will end up being the most sought after TRD pro ever made. Time will tell but from everything I have read and seen online and in chat rooms the army green trd pro will be a unicorn. I am picking mine up early next week.

Alas, I am not sure I was number one in getting mine delivered but well thanks for reading my story and my rants and my opinions and my thoughts, which some of you will agree with me and some won’t but at the end of the day I am a Toyota 4Runner lover like all of you and most definitely will be asking for help with my new rig. So be nice to me and help me when I do post!

Lastly in closing I took the first army green trd pro that came in but I think two of my internet managers here in Florida are still getting an allocation of one army green pro so if you private message me, I am happy to pass along their information and dealership and phone number. To be 100% clear I gain nothing from doing this not one penny, I am just happy to help anyone else on our great forum get one. I can’t promise that they still have it but it’s worth a try if you’re interested so feel free to message me.

Once again thanks for reading and I look forward to everyone’s comments.