1st gear: from an engineering standpoint how the hell do you design a car and account for every possible failure like this and the resulting safety risk? I mean anything with a valve cover and an exhaust manifold can do that right?

I have seen the future. It is beautiful. Strangely, it still has terrible emissions and blows apex seals regularly.

Around here, “vehicle starts sometimes” and “vehicle has 4 tires” costs roughly $1300. So the metro, Sentra, mirage, and bronco look pretty stinkin good to me.

Haha the usual counter point. I've had it for 4000 miles, but it's got 204k. So point well made. They weren't really designed to be highway cruisers anyways!

First off those tires are ridiculous. You don’t need 40” monster truck tires to get by off road. And as a trail truck, the 22re and 3vz are fine (but I would gear it if you are putting bigger tires on).

Yep, I have a 22re in my stock 4x4 pickup. It's miserably slow, and worse on the highway.

OH MY GOD. MY NAME IS DEREK AND I AM OBSESSED WITH TOYOTA TRUCKS.

This is an excellent article, not only because it was inspired by toilet-proximal literature (where I too usually read about cars the most) but also because I forgot for a minute that I have a blown head gasket and must deal with it this weekend

In other news: some cops are assholes, much like people in general, cops being people and what not

I have a turd brown old truck. It says that I am too lazy or unskilled to repaint it, because it is a terrible color.

Finally someone acknowledges my screen name’s namesake

As is your username

I hate this article.

I believe having an old jeep or Toyota is part of the college experience. And by college experience, I mean more or less living out of it, eating nothing but beans in a can, and spending more of your time trying to coax the truck into moving under its own power than you do on your dynamics homework.

But really, why would you date a girl who drives a Taurus? Or an Accord. Just realized all of my exes drove accords.

Only to meet a sad, sad end as the shock tower exploded on impact.

Andrew,

Holy mother of mini trucks batman, that turbo Toyota is the tops!!!

Hahaha oh my goodness I fell for it.

Not true. Honda ordered an old school ford or Chevy small block back in the 70s, can’t remember which. But they designed different heads, redesigned the fuel system and vacuum lines, and actually met EPA NOx requirements for the mid 70s without a catalytic converter.