opinions please,

sniperman

hi all,mate is thinking of going for a hilux for deer shooting.he has a 2018 mondeo,and its just not the car for those mountain rough roads and forest lanes,so he came across a 141 hilux for sale 105,ooo mis on clock,2.4 diesel 4wd crew cab,looks in mint condition,6 months warranty, 22,000 euro,he has a buyer for the mondeo.wants to keep the hilux for a few years,wants to know are they any good in performance,reliability, running costs,and would his insurance rise,are there any others costs,like vat.the tax is 333,any opinions advice welcome,thanks

Grizzly 45

Toyota Hilux has a well-deserved reputation for being an absolute tank.

Heck! half of the African warlords, the Taliban forces and Western Special forces who served in the sandbox, and if Messers Clarkson, Hammond and May late of BBC Top gear couldn't kill one of these machines...

That is up to 2014 when Toyota decided to go and bugger around with a perfectly good design of a simple reliable, utility machine that could be fixed with a socket set, a rock, and a hammer out in the middle of nowhere, and start adding electronic crap that no one wanted or needed and started scrimping on materials where it matters, and letting engineers loose to design an awkward engine to work on. I believe they subbed the building of these out of Japan to Thailand[?].

IOW be aware that the 2014 machines are the crossover year into a new design, so there could be bugs aplenty in the electronics and rust where you can't see it. I'd be suss about the genuine[?] mileage for the year and would want to see service records and who owned this before. Pickups tend to be abused more here than normal 4x4s by their construction and agricultural owners. On the positive side, the parts are cheap as chips,[at least for the 01 I drive],and easily got online or from most motor factors.

I assume he has a business or farm or some way of keeping the 333 tax?If so, the motor tax office[in Clare at least] want to see proof of a business,herd or flock number. Also, depending on what sort of a bllx of a Garda or Revenue officer he might run into in a checkpoint, him using a commercial vehicle for something outside of the business of whatever might take some explaining...Has happened. Otherwise, it's paying over a grand road tax for having something this size as a private car with that engine size. Insurance,you are going onto commercial,so it is a new policy,and they don't ASFIK do automatic swop overs from private without a no doubt price hike/reduction.Oh yeah, they'll probably want a current DOE cert for this as its commercial and that's more expensive than the NCT[150 euros PA] I think? The DOE is much stricter than the NCT and if there is anything at fault there it will show up.

All in all I would say get him to get at least two mechanics who do commercial vehicles as a day-to-day job to give it a stem-to-stern checkout and if they both concur it's a good machine that isn't a pig with lipstick on it, then he should be good.If it has service records to match,all the better.