That's a bummer. Let's face it folks, the 2005+ Tacoma's are
not a heavy duty platform. I love mine, but I am very much aware of its limitations. The frame is light duty, the composite bed looks to almost certainly promise long-term durability issues, and a number of other areas on the truck are decidedly light weight. An FJ40 it is not. Surprisingly, even with all of these weight-saving measures it still gets pretty crummy gas mileage. I average about 17.5 miles per gallon with mine and I have never surpassed 18.5. Meanwhile, one of my coworker's recently bought a 2009 crewcab 4x4 F-150. It has a V-8 and is a much larger truck and on a her first long trip she got 22 mpg. What gives, Toyota? And when are we going to get a freakin' turbo diesel in this country?
It would seem that the key to long-term durability for these machines is keeping the weight down. It is something that many of us ignore. Camping gear used to consist of a Coleman stove and an ice chest, but now it seems to require hundreds of pounds of stuff. Modifications and permanently-mounted accessories add to the burden. I put an ARB bull bar and a winch on mine. It looks cool but I wonder how it will all hold up in the long run.
Fortunately, when I first bought my truck I got some good advice from an honest accessory dealer. I was considering a heavy steel ladder rack mounted under a camper shell. He told me to forget it. The composite bed and the frame mounting just aren't up to it. I went with an aluminum commercial-grade shell instead with no rack. I also bagged plans for mounting a rooftop tent. I just take a cot instead, and when it rains I fold down the tailgate and sleep in the back. Not very sexy, I know, and not very Out-of Africa-like ("he even took the gramophone on safari") but I think I'll survive. It's kind of like backpacking with a vehicle.
Tom Sheppard has written a series of excellent articles in Overland Journal about expedition travel in the Sahara. He has about 45 years of offroading experience to my 20, so I figure he knows a thing or two. He is an evangelist about keeping weight down, and he has an absolute rule about
never mounting anything on the outside of the vehicle. He maintains these rules even with his older G-wagon, which is a decidedly beefier platform than the Tacoma. Sounds like a drag for all of us modern gear heads, but I guess trade-offs are what its all about, and we all know that you can't have everything. Or do we?
