I want to retire my '94 Toyota pickup and get a new Tacoma single cab or extended cab with a 4 cylinder and a manual transmission. I am in the DFW, TX area. I cant find one. Even searching toyota's website and doing an inventory search only shows automatic transmissions. Toyota says they make them but not sure if they send any to the US. Just curious if I am wasting my time searching, or if I have to special order a manual transmission truck.

 

I'd call a couple local dealers and tell them what you're looking for I'm sure they will happily accommodate you

 

Your local dealership should be able to find one somewhere in the Southeastern Toyota area. I sold Toyotas for a couple years at a dealership in Northwest Arkansas and we ordered a few of them in - we were in the Southeastern Toyota region as well. They will try and stick you on price but stay strong. It doesn't cost them squat to bring one in from another dealership.

Be sure you read up on the issues with the manual transmissions in the 2nd gens, though. Most folks go with automatics because of them.

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Up until a year or two ago if you wanted a 4x4 with the 4 cylinder all you could get was a manual transmission. I bought a new extended cab 4cyl 5 speed in 05 and it was a pretty good rig besides front wheel bearings failing at 75k and the A/C compressor and alternator shortly afterwards. I've got an 05 double cab now. If you think it's tough to find a 4 cyl with a manual try finding a manual double cab on the used market. I looked for a long time and finally gave up and bought an auto.

 

That's good to know. I was told by a local salesman that they got what Toyota gave them, and that was that. He also works at a dealership that is the only show in town-and then some.

 

I can only speak from my experience, but as long as we could locate a vehicle that was inventoried at another dealership and there wasn't anything weird with it (pending order, pending inspection, etc.) we could request it be relocated to us.

When I bought my 2007 years ago I had to "special order" it. They simply looked at the report each day to see which dealership was being allocated with a truck like what I spec'd and they would just put a request out there for that truck. This was before I was selling cars but the salesman said they had never been denied a request as long as they showed the customer had serious interest.

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This guy basically talked down to us the entire time-if my (now ex) fiance hadn't wanted the car so badly I would have told him to get lost. As it was, I told him to be quiet during the test drive so that I could listen for noises. I was peeved that he wouldn't let us take the $15K Corolla on a test drive without him. Rant/thread jack over.

 

We were required to go with our customers on test drives also. Policies are policies unfortunately.

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Thanks for the input. Quite honestly I am asking here first as I don't trust dealers. Even if they tell me the truth as to why all the dealers only have autos I never will know for sure if I am getting the truth. Thanks for the heads up on the manual transmission issues. Looks like I need to research the problem. You would think manual transmissions would have been figured out by now to where there would be no issues.

 

that's funny; when I bought my 06, they let me take it home for half the day but then again it wasn't brand new

 

Nice! I did this with a Tundra I almost bought when I was selling Toyotas. Could have gotten it for $13k below MSRP with my discount and the shutting down of production on them at the time. I'm kind of kicking myself for not doing it, but the gas mileage made me cringe.

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