20 SF Weight and Minimum required tow vehicle

[muddywater]

I started this thread in June 2005 while shopping for more fuel efficient transportation. With gas trends, I expected more and more people to start looking for alternatives. Almost a year ago, I ended up trading in my Z71 for a new 4WD Toyota Tacoma 4-cylinder. I wrote down my exact gas usage for the first 10 tanks of gas or so and my gas milage was pretty consistently 21-22 MPG (that's highway and city together). Interestingly it gets pretty close to the same milage in the city that it gets on the highway (good city/bad highway). The Z71 got good gas milage on the highway for a vehicle its size (17-18), but city or offroad was more like 13 MPG the few times I actually checked fuel burn. The changeover has helped my finances to the point that I am no longer seeing red. The 4-cyl Tacoma with a manual trannie seems to have a harder time at the ramp in 2WD than the old S10 I had once, but if you put it in 4-low it could probably pull out a 30 footer though you won't catch me trying it. Note that I don't have to tow very far, so gas milage while towing was not important. In retrospect, the better option would probably be to keep an old truck for towing and buy a Honda Civic or something that gets 40+ mpg to use the rest of the time, but for the one vehicle route, it serves my purpose. The Tacoma 4-cyl had a higher towing capacity than anything except a 6-cyl and it had seemed pointless to downgrade to a 6-cyl, many of which got worse milage than my V-8.

-Muddy