[E-Revonut]

Well I know from experience that the newer F-150's are great trucks! I have an '04 extended cab FX4, a similar truck can be picked up for about $14k in my area. I have owned cars and trucks, used to have a small car for traveling all over and my truck was my toy, now I have another Ford Ranger 2wd for travel. Ranger doesn't get as good of mileage as a car but it's a truck! I sit up higher, it's rear wheel drive, and easy to work on. Personally I dislike foreign vehicles but esspecially Toyota. based on the prices you gave I can only assume you are looking at 4x4 trucks, don't know where you live but here in central NY we get lots of snow and I wouldn't trade my 4x4 for a front wheel drive car. I don't know how much room your looking for but since you mentioned a Tacoma I'm guessing your not looking to pile a bunch of friends in with you. I would suggest a Ford Ranger FX4, great trucks and you'll have tons of power and can expect about 17MPG average with a moderately heavy foot at times. F-150's are great, I get between 15-16MPG combined city/highway driving, have gotten 18MPG on the highway with my 33x12.5 Mud tires, which fit without a lift. If you go with a car, I know you don't want an average car and I said I dislike foreign vehicles, it's hard to beat a Honda. They are incredible cars and you could always step up to an accord. Then there's a VW TDI Jetta, not sure what you can find these for but you get a 4cyl turbo diesel that has tons of torque and can get 50+MPG, actually gets better mileage than a Prius and has 10x the power!

Hope this helps in some way