Before all that, however, I figured I'd explain why I've chosen to do my car first because I'm sure a lot of you are wondering: "This car came out ages ago, who cares about it." And you're right, but before I start reviewing new cars, I thought it'd be clever to start with my own; for the same reason that you wouldn't expect to start with sodomy first and then move into oral sex.
That being said, lets move it on to the car I've chosen to buy. Back in 2009, I had a Toyota 'Nameless Wonder' 4WD pickup, (a Hilux for some of you well-read viewers) that was a single cab. And I decided I needed more room to haul things like: people for example. So I opted for the 4Runner pictured above. I test-drove a lot of them before finally landing on this particular one, and now that I've owned it for a while I can tell you a lot about it. First of all, as of right now, it has 171k miles on it, it's a 5-speed manual, four wheel drive, and has the 22R-E 4-cylinder engine in it. And as you'd expect, it's very very slow. Because when it was shiny and new, it had 117 horsepower. Which is kind of like trying to power a space-shuttle with a hamster wheel, as it weighs close to 2 tons. If you try to go up hill at all, you'll be lucky to get out of 3rd gear. Which sort of makes it very annoying if you live in, oh lets say, Colorado for example.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it has absolutely nothing in it. Which has its benefits that I will explain later, but the cons outweigh the plusses very severely. To start, it has only one powered accessory: which is the back window. The back window has to be powered because that's how you get into the trunk. Which made perfect sense on the 1st generation 4Runner because you could take the top off and it would become a pick-up truck. On the 2nd generation however, it made absolutely no sense at all, because the top is fused to the rest of the car so there's no point in having a 'tailgate.' And it becomes even more ridiculous and difficult if the key on the tailgate doesn't operate the rear window anymore, like it doesn't on mine.
The list of non-ammenities doesn't stop there, however. No air conditioning, manual windows, manual locks, no cruise control, no ABS, manual door mirrors, not even a CD player. So one has to ask the question: "Why is there an 'SR5' badge on the back?" The 'SR5' is supposed to be the highest available trim level. Truth be told, it's classified as an 'SR5 Base,' which the Toyota enthusiast will regard as nothing more than an oxymoron. But some rather nice things were standard in 1994: Shift on the fly 4WD, power steering, a manual transmission, and a clock. Also some fog lamps that I put on.
So why, you ask, did I buy it? Because it didn't have any of those things to begin with. If you look at a car that's been driven on and off the road for the better part of 19 years, things are going to go wrong. This 4Runner, however, doesn't have anything TO go wrong on it. And at the end of the day, when you're desperately poor and living in it, you can't afford to fix something like a window motor or a cruise control actuator.
Also its legendary reliability cannot be taken out of the equation. The 22R-E was one of the best motors ever put into production. Even the 3.0L V6 (nicknamed the 3-Point-Slow) that came with most of the 4Runners wasn't that bad. Sure there were some head gasket issues, but Toyota eventually came through on that one. And the thing is: having a 'not so good' Toyota engine is still better than having a really great Chevy engine in my book.
To sum up then, I'm glad I bought the car that I did. Sure I'd like air conditioning four months out of the year, but it's a small price to pay for a car that has served me well... after I completely rebuilt the damn thing a month after I bought it because the timing chain snapped. Which goes to show that even the most informed of us can make a mistake. Also, it proves that even the most reliable cars can suffer the strain when presented with idiotic owners who don't perform routine maintenance.
No comments:
Post a Comment