Tyler wrote:
Why not a volvo?
Too expensive. I don't want to/can't spend a ton of money on something right now. Besides, I don't think they (Volvo) make the best 4wd SUV's and the Volvo probably won't be as strong off road as the Toyota will be and will be way more expensive to maintain. To me the Volvo SUV (like the BMW, Lexus, Infiniti, Porsche, and VW SUVs) appear to be made for suburban yuppies who's idea of "off road" would be driving 10 km down a high grade gravel road on the way to a picnic ground or drive-in campsite. I'm not going to be doing super heavy duty off-roading but I am going to be out in semi-remote oil fields in muddy and sometimes snowy conditions. I need something that can take a bit of punishment with a half decent amount of ground clearance.
The one with the new engine had it replaced at 150K miles and now has 110 kmiles on the new engine. The other one has ~200 kmiles on it with original engine. I know that's a TON of miles in either case but the pictures of the exteriors and interiors of these cars lead me to think they've been well looked after. Pics, however, can be deceiving so in both cases I'm running CarFax checks on the cars and if I'm still interested in one or both of them at that point I'll have them sent to a neutral third party repair shop of my choosing and have the them thoroughly inspected inside and out. I'll decide if I'm going to make an offer after I've reviewed the report and talked to the mechanics who inspected and road tested the vehicles. Hopefully, one of them will turn out to have had lots of stuff replaced and be in really solid shape.
My thinking is that with the American economy tanking so bad it should be a great time to be buying a vehicle like that down there. I'm finding the prices on a lot of used SUVs way lower in the US than here. Pretty much all of the '97 4Runner Limiteds I've seen for sale in Western Canada have been in the $9,500- $12K range and those have quite a lot of miles on them too. These ones in the US are several thousands less. Well worth looking into IMO.
If I had the money available to me I'd also be buying up some property down there right now. One of Laureen's massage clients just picked up a really nice almost brand new good sized house located just a few blocks from the ocean in Florida with a pool for $180K. Last year that same house was on the market for over $700K...
