Hey Ed, I looked at all major small pickups except Chevy when I bought my
2000 Dak. If you look at Consumer Reports, (Which I kinda despise because they
can't seem to look past Toyotas, They think the world revolves around them) I
quickly narrowed the selection down to the Dak and the Tacoma. The first
Tacoma I drove rode like a dream. Powerful (enough), quiet, not too bad a ride
(I needed a club cab 4X4) but it was white. I wanted the silver. Drove 4 more
over the next two weeks at 3 different Toyota dealerships and there was
something wrong with every one of them, imballanced tires, moans from tranny,
pulls to the left/right. I drove 5 Daks as well and the only thing that went
wrong with any of them was one of them stalled when I first started it. It
fired right back up and didn't give any problems after that.
My In-laws, (who are severe Toyota bigots) brought me over the January
issue of Consumer reports which did a test of small trucks. The Dak wasn't
tested but the Takoma was. Of course the only bad things they said were that
it had a choppy ride and the interior was 'spartan'. Predicted reliability
they listed as 'Good to Excellent, Much better than average'. But in the back
of that issue was the annual review of vehicle's and their actual reliability
numbers as reported by owners. In there the Tacoma numbers had fallen off
considerably for the '98 and '99 model years. The Dak had pretty bad numbers
reported for '97, and '98. But the numbers for the '99 ones were much better
than the Tacoma numbers! I went and bought the Dak !! It just rode so much
nicer and the undercairrage parts were so much stouter than the current
Tacomas. The Tacoma is supposed to get a facelift for 2001, so if you are
hellbent on that then you may want to wait and see what they look like.
As a side note, a buddy here at work bought a 2000 Tacoma CC 4X4 2 weeks
before I bought my Dak, Since early December my Dak has been in the shop once
(Actually for 2 recalls I got, turned out neither of them affected my truck).
His has been in the shop 4 times. They can't find a cab squeak thats buggin'
him, his clutch pedal cluster disintegrated, and something to do with his
brakes. But his truck definitely has a nicer paint job than mine.... Mine has
little buggers and lint peices in it in several places, his is a thing of
beauty.
As for me, I'll keep the Dak. Like some other folks have said, maybe you
need to find a different Dealer if thats possible. I can certainly sympathize
though since you are obviously having more problems than I have had with mine.
You gotta do what you gotta do, and if your Dak ain't workin for you then you
probably need to make a change.
----- previous post -----
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2000 11:50:12 -0800
From: Ed and Kristi Townsend <townsend@ainet.com>
Subject: Re: DML: My Daimler Chrysler Nightmare (I wish I could wake up!) -
LONG
I would hardly call 14 years lasting a month....I owned my prior Toyota for
5 years, put 50,000 miles on it (bought it with 90,000 on the odometer), and
beat the hell out of that truck. Now tell me, why am I having all these
problems on a truck that I baby? As far as the new Toyotas, I will do a bit
more research, but from all the info that I can find in print and on the
web, the Dakota series of trucks have a much higher failure rate than the
Toyotas..........real world experience says it all in my eyes. I know 3 ppl
personally that have Daks, and all of them have had problems that I would
put in the major category. I know many many ppl with 93 and newer Toyotas,
and not one major problem. As far as what Steve says, I am going to research
the info and DEFINETLY take that into consideration. But I feel that I would
be stupid to give DC one more dime of my money. Even Ford is looking good to
me now.
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