If you just HAD to purchase from a "stealership", would it matter to you if it was a Toyota place or some other? Just looking for general thoughts.......
Beast, I think it all boils down to history and documentation, no matter where you buy it from. Many side of the road used car dealerships go pick cars up at auctions where they are simply the highest bidder. All they care about is if the car will make them more money than they spend on it, in most cases. Unlike you, they aren't as concerned with if/when the timing belt was replaced or if the lower ball joint recall was ever taken care of. Now, if they happen to get one that has a glove box full of good documentation, then all the better. But most vehicles this old should have more doc than will fit into a glove box. If the owner was like me, he has a file in his/her home with all of that stuff in it, in chronological order (OCD). The T4R is probably the only vehicle, within my budget, that I would consider buying with that kind of age and 6 digits showing on the odometer. But it's only as good as the maintenance that was done to it. I'd rather have one with 250k that has been meticulously maintained, than one with 90k and not even a shred of evidence that the oil has even been changed in it.
A dealership is more likely (not always) to have a trade-in that maybe the person bought from them originally, had it maintained there, and has history to prove it. My neighbor just bought a used 4th gen from the dealership I bought my 5th gen from and it was just that scenario. He traded in his wife's 06 highlander with 70k miles on it, for an 05 4th gen with 100k on it and feels like he got an upgrade (and I agree). But the salesman (a mutual friend of ours) sold the vehicle when it was new, it had always been serviced at the dealership, and the people went back to him to trade it when they wanted something new.
For us, leather seats or limited vs. SR5 trim was not a deal breaker at all. It's personal preference. If we had found a better maintained, cleaner SR5, we would have bought it over the limited we ended up with.
