Suggestions for an economical four wheel drive pickup truck?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ll be coming into a moderate sum of money soon and I’m thinking of buying a four wheel drive pickup truck for my daughter. She lives way out in the boonies in Northern California with many steep, un-paved roads. She owns a pickup now that keeps breaking down. I’d like to see her driving an economical, dependable vehicle appropriate for where she lives. She owns a horse (but no horse trailer) and needs to transport hay, firewood, etc.

I went to my local Toyota dealer and the Tacoma Access Cab 4x4 4-cylinder manual transmission seemed to fit the bill. The estimated gas mileage of 18/21 seems rather low. Is this typical? The dealer had a 2003 truck on the lot with 170K miles. The truck looked to be in good condition but with that kind of mileage it sounds like they’ll be a lot of expensive repairs down the road (soon).

What other similar vehicles by other manufactures are there and your experiences with them?

2

Since the OP is looking for advice, let’s move this over to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

3

well, mileage wise, I have a 98 grand Cherokee with the 5.2L engine, and an automatic. i get 13.6MPG in the city. 18 doesn’t sound too bad.

4

I would look for a Nissan. Very high quality, generally cheaper than Toyota.

5

I’ve got an '07 Tacoma 4cyl access cab. I get around 20-22 mpg just going around town. Lots of hills here too. When going on trips on the highway I can get up to 28-30 mpg.

It’s a great truck, if slightly under powered, for example, there’s a long (two mile) hill that I go up from time to time and need to down shift from fifth to fourth if I’m not doing 65 when I start up the hill.

I’ve got 75k miles on it. Only repair I ever had to make was the driver’s side door lock had t be replaced. I’d recommend a newer one if you can find it, 170k is a lot of miles.

6

A smaller truck will get better mileage than a larger one, but a smaller truck also won’t be as good for hauling around firewood and hay, and won’t be able to pull as much weight if she ever does get a trailer for the horse. That little four cylinder engine would be fine if you just want to get around in snow and get over bad roads, but it’s a bit underpowered for hauling firewood and hay. For her uses, you want to look at a 6 cylinder with a decent sized bed.

Four wheel drive always gets crappy gas mileage. That’s just life. My Dodge gets about 16 mpg so 18/21 sounds pretty darn good to me.

I’ve owned Dodge and Nissan. I’ve had good experiences with both. Nissans, at least in my experience (and the experience of people I know) tend to run forever and are very difficult to kill, but the older ones used to have a lot of problems with body rust as they age.

I bought my Nissan with 60k miles on it. I had the clutch slave cylinder die, a broken exhaust manifold from me high centering over a snow bank while driving around in a blizzard, the fuel pump dying at close to 300k miles, and lots of problems with body rust. When the fuel pump died it otherwise still ran fine but I got rid of it because I was tired of fighting the rust and just wanted something new. I kinda regretted getting rid of it later. I could have gotten a lot more miles out of that truck.

I bought the Dodge with 110k on it. It’s up to 180k now. I had a problem with the 4WD transfer self-destructing shortly after I got it (which made me very unhappy at the time) but other than that the only problem I have had with it is the catalytic converter rusting apart, and when the catalytic converter came apart inside the back pressure from having the exhaust all stuffed up busted the EGR valve. The problem with the transfer when I first got it made me really hate the truck but the lack of problems since has made me like it again. It’s gotten me through a couple of blizzards and other crappy weather, it does great on the crappy back roads around here, and I’ve overloaded it with firewood a couple of times and it didn’t really complain much (lesson learned - if you say you’ll help a friend cut down some trees and you really don’t need firewood but you’ll take a “little bit” just to be nice, they will keep throwing logs into the back of your truck until they physically can’t make any more stay on the truck).

I don’t know what things are like in your area, but I was looking at vehicles with closer to 100k miles on them and was still able to find quite a few in good condition for a reasonable price. The hardest part for me was finding one with a manual transmission. I refused to buy an automatic. If you don’t want it to be breaking down a lot you need to look at a lot lower than 170k miles on the thing.

7

I have a 1994 Ford F150 regular cab long box 4-wheel drive and other than getting the front end totally rebuilt when I bought it a little over 4 years ago (dealer paid half) and a new alternator and battery, it has been a real good work horse for me. I’ve never bothered to check the mileage, but I would imagine it’s nowhere near 18/21. I traded a 1993 Dodge Dakota for it and I would say I like the bigger pickup as it doesn’t take as many trips to get things done.

8

Subaru Baja with a small trailer?

eta: The EPA rating is 23/28 for a manual equipped non-turbo 4-cylinder. You won’t find anything higher than that in anything else resembling a pickup truck with 4WD. Just keep in mind that it’s a car, not a truck, and you’re putting fuel economy above utility.

9

Look around at what people who use their trucks to earn a living with drive. Of course there are exceptions, but you won’t see many Toyotas.

One reason is that the Toyotas are priced about one step higher than, say a Ford. A Ranger is thousands less than a Tacoma. For the Price of a Tacoma, you can get an F-150, and for the price of a Tundra you can get a F-250, and if you want a 1 Ton, or a Diesel engine, then Toyota has nothing to offer. Toyota is still fairly new to the full-size truck market. By most accounts the Tundra is OK, maybe even better than most of the 1/2 ton competition, (Albeit much more expensive) but the T100 was a turd.

I have worked on Ford Rangers and Toyota pickups (from before they started calling them Tacomas, but essentially the same truck) of similar vintage, and both required about the same amount of repairs. The Toyota parts cost about 2-3X more than the Ford parts, and access is almost always horrible. In one case I was not able to buy the bracket supporting the clutch and/or brake pedal on the Toyota, (It was years ago, I forget exactly) so I had to repair/improve the old one with TIG welding. Overall, the Toyota seems more like it was designed by many engineers who didn’t communicate well. I think it must have at least twice as many pieces as the Ford…almost nothing on the Toyota fills more than one function, and there are lots of separate brackets, fittings, etc. that could have been made as one part.

All that aside, pickups suck on slick roads. 4WD ones less so, but anything with some mass in the back and a shorter wheelbase will likely do much better.

10

I was in the market for a compact 4x4 pickup last year, and these are the conclusions I reached:

The Chevy/GMC mini-trucks still seem to be having reliability issues.

The Ranger is okay, but hard to find well-optioned.

The Dakota is nice, but barely more efficient than a full-size.

The Toyota and Nissans are both very good trucks, but command ludicrous prices on the used market. I am also annoyed by the fact that they only offer the larger cabs on V6 trucks.

I ended up ditching the compact truck search altogether and buying a 5 year old Dodge full-size truck with the small V8 and a 6-speed stick for about a third of what I would have paid for a similar aged V6 Tacoma that would have also met my needs. The big Dodge is only barely less efficient than the V6 Tacoma and is a whole lot more truck.

My conclusion: The compact truck offerings in this country really aren’t that impressive, but the full-size trucks are surprisingly nice and affordable.

Side rant:

I would argue the real issue isn’t the mileage hit you get from four wheel drive, but that because of marketing decisions made by car makers, all 4x4 trucks sold in North America today are overpowered.

The current 4-cylinder Tacoma gets about the same mileage as a 4-cylinder Toyota Pickup from the 80’s, but has more power than a V6 truck from the 80’s. In other words, 25 years of automotive technology has gone all towards making the thing more powerful (and slightly larger), not more efficient. A 30 MPG truck with similar performance to an 80’s Toyota 4x4 pickup would be perfectly possible with today’s technology. In fact, most compact pickups sold in the world do get 30 MPG+, partly because they’re diesels but also because low HP numbers are still considered acceptable in most markets, but apparently not North America. If Toyota decided to sell the diesel powered 4-door HiLux they sell in there rest of the world here, I would trade my Dodge in tomorrow.

Anyways, that’s neither here nor there. To the OP: yes, low mileage is typical of 4x4 pickups sold in North America.

11

Blasphemy!

I would like to reiterate this. The 4x4’s are great in deep snow and mud, but on icy or partially snow-covered paved roads the 4 wheel drive is usually not useful and can even be dangerous.

12

I still own a Nissan RWD manual transmission truck that I bought new in 1995 and still own, now with 270K (It’s my “second” vehicle nowadays but I love it.) The thing is bullet-proof and* incredibly* reliable. Between 170K and (almost) 270K, apart from basic maintenance, I’ve replaced: heater blower motor, starter, alternator…that’s it. Less than a grand, combined. I get about 24 mpg. I bought it when I lived in Colorado and now I’m in Michigan, both snowy states, and I’ve yet to run the thing off the road or get into an accident.

Four-wheel-drive doesn’t guarantee safety on ice or snow pack. In 28 years of driving in snowy/icy states, the only two times I completely lost control were in 4WD vehicles. And the majority of vehicles I’ve owned in the last three decades have been front- or rear-wheel drive, basic transportion appliances.

13

The Tundra isn’t “much more expensive” than the other 1/2 tons. The base model might have started at a somewhat higher price because the domestics usually had a really stripped down fleet model like the Sierra with the 190 hp 4.3l OHV V6 and a 4 speed auto or some such that was a few grand cheaper but comparably equipped the pricing is about the same across the line.
The Tundra isn’t particularly popular because A) People who buy trucks tend to not change their preference very quickly. It took GM 30 years of selling millions of Vegas and Citations and Sunfires every year to convince people that the Honda Accord was a better car, a relatively easy choice, and yet today people still buy GM cars! b) it doesn’t have as many cab/bed powertrain options as the others. It doesn’t offer a 3/4 ton or above frame and the others always count their 3/4 ton and above sales together with their light duty sales so it looks like they are much more popular and C) Compared to the other trucks the Tundra just isn’t that good. It’s still on a C-section frame IIRC while the competition is all fully boxed, none of its powertrains are class leading in power or fuel economy, the interior and exterior style and materials are merely “OK”, it’s reliable but so is every thing else on the market, why would anyone buy it? It’s not a bad vehicle but it takes many years of making clearly superior vehicles to really change public perceptions.

14

You’ve all brought up some good points that I hadn’t even thought of before. I think I should reconsider getting a larger truck. Ultimately, she will decide. Thanks!

One of the reasons I’m thinking of a four cylinder instead of six is that about half the roads in her area are truly single lane – when you see someone coming the other direction one of you has to find a place to pull out so the other can pass. It’s not safe to do more than 15 maybe 20 mph on such roads.

I assume a transfer case lets you select a really low gear and so power is not so relevant for going up a hill. There’s a steep dirt road leading up to her property and she prefers four wheel drive so it doesn’t tear up the road when she goes up it.

15

I used to think so, but I had a 2010 Ranger 4x4 and the stability and traction control kept it pointed straight. I had to turn it all off to have any fun at all in shallow snow and ice. I also had to turn it off to get anywhere in deep snow. I’d still have it if got decent mileage, but it was my daily driver. It got 18-20 mpg and I drive too much for that.