2024 Toyota Tacoma: What to check before buying

Automatic transmissions fail on nearly new trucks, often under 6,000 miles and sometimes within the first few hundred. Drivers describe high revs with no power, harsh clunks into gear, and trucks stuck in 1st, 2nd, or 6th gear. Many failures come with a Hybrid System Malfunction message and a dash full of unrelated warnings. Some trucks lose propulsion on highways or in traffic. Dealers report metal shavings in the fluid and replace the transmission, sometimes with the torque converter. Replacement transmissions are scarce, and trucks sit at dealers for weeks waiting on parts.

Most of these complaints involve recall 25V058000. Debris can damage the rear brake hoses, which leak fluid and can cause brake loss. Reported failures include a pedal that sinks to the floor, low brake warnings, and fluid leaking from the truck. Two complaints involve crashes, and one reports an injured passenger. The bigger theme is parts shortages. Owners wait months for the recall repair, some cannot use the truck for work, and a few say a dealer never mentioned the open recall. Separate reports describe the truck creeping or jumping forward after a stop.

Recall 25V595000 covers an instrument cluster that can go blank, and owners report the repair is delayed by unavailable parts. Without the cluster, the speedometer does not work, and one owner says the truck could not get commercial insurance. Multiple reports describe the multimedia screen going black, dropping Apple CarPlay, or showing a Retry message while driving. One truck caught fire in the bed on the interstate at 8022 miles. Other complaints include an inaccurate fuel gauge, drive-start warnings that came back after a fuel pump replacement, and rattling windows.

Body and trim are the focus here, not frame failures. The hood shakes or flutters at highway speed, and one owner reports this through the first 10,000 miles. The factory plastic bed cap rail covers lift and separate from the bed, especially at the corners, in normal use with no aftermarket parts. Paint chips where the bed meets the cab. Only a few complaints are on file, and none report a crash or injury.

Lane keeping steers the truck out of its lane without driver input. Reports describe sudden moves toward exit ramps at highway speed, especially where lane markings are broken, and the truck continuing to steer across a white line. Toyota reportedly confirmed the behavior but calls it a system limitation and offers no fix. In another report, a truck accidentally left in 4-wheel drive locked up during tight turns and had to be towed. The dealer called it driver error.

The manual height adjuster on the driver seat does not hold. Drivers raise the seat, and it slowly sinks toward its lowest position while driving or overnight, so it needs a few cranks to raise again. One report says this happens within 30 minutes of driving and every day. Owners worry it could drop all the way while the truck is moving. No crashes or injuries are reported.

Automatic emergency braking activates with nothing ahead and can bring the truck to a full stop. Reports place this early, at about 221 and 2,000 miles, including a hard stop at low speed with all four brakes locked. Dealers found nothing wrong or pointed to a possible software update. Separately, safety systems correctly shut off when a trailer is connected but stay off after the trailer is unhooked, leaving the truck without those features in normal driving.

No deployment in a crash is the shared failure. Both complaints in this category are crash reports, and together they list 31 injuries. One describes a T-bone collision at about 30 mph where nothing deployed. The other describes a total-loss crash with no deployment, which the driver says came seconds after the transmission stopped engaging gears. Two reports are too few to show a clear pattern, but each one describes a serious event.