Every town has its Craigslist Crackpots, but occasionally, a vehicle comes along that requires needs a blow-by-blow analysis.
At some point in the 1999 calendar year, this 2000 Tacoma proudly rolled off the line, either in Tijuana, Mexico or Fremont, California.
We don’t know much about the trim level, the options ordered or the power plant because the description in the ad doesn’t offer much in the way of information.
What we do know is that if you want to even look at this $12,000 masterpiece, it’s going to cost you. “I charge $100 appointment fee serious adult buyer only!” All these years, we’ve been selling cars without the $100 appointment fee! What fools we’ve been!
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The ad includes all the standard boilerplate language shown to ward off spammers, scammers, idlers and good-for-nothings with 100 percent effectiveness: “Serious offer’s only. Don’t waste my time!”
The meat of the ad is an accounting of the man-hours and greenbacks required to construct this chef-d’oeuvre: “Over 2000 hours and 20000 invested.”
Here’s where we begin to take issue, and embark on a careful accounting of the claims held within. 2,000 hours is a long, long time. Let’s break it down into eight hours workdays, five days a week.
That’s fifty weeks.
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Considering you’d probably have to schlep the fam to Knott’s Berry Farm for a week in the summer and you’d take a week at Christmas, that’s an entire year of working on nothing but this Purpureus pickup.
That’s approximately the same amount of time the Lamborghini factory spends when it restores one of its historic cars at its Polo Storico division in its home town of Sant’Agata Bolognese.
It can’t take that long to bolt a set of headers to the doors, even with a really dull drill bit.
Twenty thousand dollars wouldn’t get you very far in a Lamborghini restoration, but it could take you a long way toward producing a vehicle that looked like it crashed into the accessory aisle at Pep Boys.
Let’s take a look at what we’ve got in obvious dollars spent:
Mr. Gasket Fake Blower Hood Scoop: $297.95
Small Block Chevy V-8 Chrome Headers: $113.95
2015 Freightliner Replacement Mirrors: $125 ea x 2
Kobalt Diamond Plate Black Powder Coated Truck Box: $269 x 2
XD Riot Chrome Wheels: $405 x 4
Jegs Universal Leaf Spring Traction Bars, Chrome: $68.26
T0 be fair, we haven’t calculated the cost of the corrugated plastic for the homemade bumper, but we’ll generously add $500 for that.
In total, we’re looking at a cash outlay of $3,388.16
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We also haven’t factored in the cost of the truck. Out of the sake of generosity, let’s assume that the seller is the original owner and purchased the truck brand new. In 2000, a Toyota Tacoma Regular Cab 4WD had a sticker price of $15,968. Without factoring in depreciation, mileage, etc., the grand total sits at $19,356.16.
A truck in this configuration with average mileage after 17 years (around 155,000 miles) comes in at $3,275.
Look, if you don’t have the $12,000 in cash, the seller is open to offers: “May trade for a vacation property’s in Tenn.”
Have we got just the place:
