So many little trucks, so little time, so little money. I like little trucks, which isn’t surprising to any of you. This 1995 Toyota Tacoma is a little bed, I mean, short bed model with a 5-speed manual, it’s posted here on craigslist in Tacoma, Washington, and the seller is asking $9,500. Here is the original listing, and thanks to Curvette for another great tip!
The weird part is that I like huge pickups just as much, but I have no need for one and no room to store one. Little trucks, on the other hand, can fit in our little garage and more often than not, fit into my little budget. For a guy who’s 6′-5″ tall, that’s a lot of little. This little Tacoma is well-used, as in it has a lot of scratches in the paint and maybe a ding or two.
The seller has included photos showing it in action, hauling what looks like an exercise bike in the back. I would have guessed it was owned by a landscape company, given the number of scratches on the tailgate and on the back portion. The short bed is unlined and definitely has been used over the last 31 years. The Satin Black Metallic paint could look a lot nicer with a good detailing, but that’s often the case. This is the first year for the Tacoma, which replaced the Hilux (or “pickup”) in the U.S., and these little rigs were assembled in California.
The gray vinyl on both sides of the front bench seat is cracked, with the driver’s side being much worse. That should be a relatively cheap and easy fix and I’d want to do that, just to keep it from being a vehicle that you don’t care about and never fix little things. That has a tendency to snowball into not fixing bigger things, and pretty soon, you have a beater. That isn’t to say this truck is even remotely approaching beater status! My random thought snowballed there; my apologies. Back to the nice 5-speed shifter seen in the photo above, and the rest of the interior looks great to me.
The engine should be Toyota’s 2.4-liter DOHC inline-four with 142 horsepower and 160 lb-ft of torque. Rolling through the 5-speed manual to the rear wheels, the seller says this is a one-owner truck, it has no AC, it’s all stock, strong, and reliable. Have any of you owned a Tacoma from this era?
That’s a deal, and the price of under 10K, this truck isn’t even broken in yet. Good seat shop should be able fix that seat up and drive on. Nothing being built right now that’s able to do what this little truck is capable of for that kind of money.