i may be vain, but i disagree. i get more of a rush from not wanting to damage my truck than from not being worried about it at all...also, i don't want to drive around a wrinkled 4runner as my daily driver anyway. if you're going to wheel it that hard where you expect frequent damage get something cheap as a weekend toy or get an old model like he said and live with a raisin. also keep in mind if you ever do anything expeditionary, a newer model will likely be more reliable unless you replace every old part on an older model. again, to each their own, i know theres people on each side of this argument and there's no right answer. do what you do. i'd love to trade my 3rd gen in for a clean 1st gen though...

and a locker will definitely help tremendously in a lot of situations, but atrac also does pretty well in a lot of moderate cases.