Man, buying this thing was a disaster. I'd been eyeballing ebay and craigslist and cars.com and the like for probably 6 months just waiting for a 4r I liked and with reasonable mileage and price. I stumbled on one just fresh put up by a dealer. Not even priced yet. Told them I wanted to come look at it they said no problem, we'll have it ready. Hour and a half drive later I get there and they say they can't find the truck. While they're looking for it I get the $12k figure from the salesman. Fantastic! I had been expecting $14 or $15k. They were a new car Mercedes dealership and seemed to just want it off their fancy lot.
Finally they track it down to a neighboring Toyota dealership for recall work. So they told me they couldn't sell it to me that day because they didn't have it and they told me they couldn't sell it to me for like 4 months because it had a stop sale until the recall work was done and parts weren't coming until then. I gave them a polite but firm earful for telling me to come look at it when they didn't even have it and couldn't even sell it to me if they did.
So I drive back home and two days later get a call from the salesman saying I should come back down because they got the truck back and surprise there wasn't actually a stop sale on it. So I tell him sure, but I need to drive it back up here on my test drive to my mechanic for the once over. He said they could do that. So, another hour and a half drive back down there and I pick it up. Filthy and not detailed yet but nice truck. Love it. (My first 4runner and first V8.) Mechanic says it's in great shape.
So I head back down to the dealership with it and on the freeway some lady merging onto the highway merged right into the side of the truck while I was in the left lane! Scuffed up the front quarter panel. Just my luck though! a cop was sitting there radaring traffic and came over to sort us out. He ended up being a useless turd though. Her car was unregistered, uninsured and not hers and she was from out of state. He said since no one was injured nothing's gonna happen and we can both just head off. ?!!?! Man, they'd have thrown me in prison if I did what she did.
Anyway, I get back to the dealer and tell them about the accident and ask them to buff the damage out of the front quarter panel and I'll take the truck. So I need to drive back home and make a third trip down later to pick it up after they've detailed it and took care of the damage.
Great truck, great price. Worst buying experience ever.