Pick-Up Truck Advice

[drew890]

Curious if anyone has experience with early 2000's Dodge Dakota pick-ups.
Any experiences or insights would be appreciated.
Please, please let's not let this go down the rabbit hole of Toyota Tacoma's vs The World! Lol

[XXFattyHunterXX]

Can't help you since I have no experience with a Dakota...but I had a Tacoma and never had a problem.

[00tec]

My experience with most of those little pickups is that you may as well get the bigger one because there isnt much difference in fuel mileage.

[hurley842002]

My experience with most of those little pickups is that you may as well get the bigger one because there isnt much difference in fuel mileage.

I know quite a few folks with Tacomas and Frontiers, and can't think of any of them who bought the pickup for excellent fuel mileage. Most of them (myself included when I had a Tacoma), went with a Tacoma because they don't need or want a full size pickup. I couldn't have gone the places I went in a full size without extensive body damage.

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

I know quite a few folks with Tacomas and Frontiers, and can't think of any of them who bought the pickup for excellent fuel mileage. Most of them (myself included when I had a Tacoma), went with a Tacoma because they don't need or want a full size pickup. I couldn't have gone the places I went in a full size without extensive body damage.

This. I had an 03 3/4 CTD, 07 1 ton CTD, a 13 Tacoma, and now a 16 Tacoma.
The 07 CTD was awesome. Had it for 9 years. Great truck with no issues.

But eventually you get tired of not being able to park it anywhere. The convenience of room in the bed and cab is now swapped with the convenience that I can park anywhere.

Anyway, always liked those Dakotas. No idea how reliable they are.

[Tim K]

I wouldn't consider a Taco myself. They're too small in the cab and the bed, and crappy butt-on-the-floor seating position annoys me. I have an '02 Tundra that I bought new, though, and it's about my favorite vehicle ever. It's certainly the best pickup I've owned. It's got 185,000 or so on the clock now and hasn't needed anything that was not on the maintenance schedule with the exception of a drive shaft bearing. Mileage is only slightly worse than a Taco, but the power is MUCH better.

No experience with the dodge, so I'm not much help.

[Jer]

I wouldn't consider a Taco myself. They're too small in the cab and the bed, and crappy butt-on-the-floor seating position annoys me. I have an '02 Tundra that I bought new, though, and it's about my favorite vehicle ever. It's certainly the best pickup I've owned. It's got 185,000 or so on the clock now and hasn't needed anything that was not on the maintenance schedule with the exception of a drive shaft bearing. Mileage is only slightly worse than a Taco, but the power is MUCH better.

No experience with the dodge, so I'm not much help.

Butt on the floor seating position? When is the last time you sat in a Tacoma? 2002??

All that being said, the man asked about early 2000's Dakota's so....

I had a 2000 Dodge Dakota 5.9 R/T. I bought it brand new when I worked for Dodge and I'm not kidding when I say that the transmission was slipping at 5k miles on the odo. Makes no sense because while it was the 360 engine it was a RWD with a bed (read: no weight) over the rear tires to help with traction. A slight rain storm and that thing would go sideways from just lightly cracking open the throttle as gently as you could. I called it the 'countdown to worthlessness' whenever it was getting ready to rain. My street bikes got better traction in rain than that thing. Fit & finish was just okay, nothing amazing. You can get a Thunderform box for under the jump seat in the back that sounds absolutely amazing with only their mid-level subs. The factory head unit is meh at best and the interior isn't the best. Seats are serviceable but not very comfortable on longer drives more than across town for some grub. Paint was surprisingly low quality for the era and reminded me more of factory pain jobs from the 80's. To this day I see a lot of Dakotas from that late 90's early 2000's era with just awful paint jobs so apparently it wasn't just mine. For what it's worth, we had an awful lot of Dodge trucks come into the dealership around that time for transmission work and many had very low miles. It was a known weak point so know that that will likely be an issue for your truck. Otherwise, it was a decent truck. Not amazing but decent. I think I got about 8-9mpg in that thing mixed driving and some motorcycle hauling. Granted it had the 5.9L engine but it was crazy how much a 400lb motorcycle affected the fuel economy. I wouldn't even attempt to pull a trailer with it.

[Great-Kazoo]

Get one with a manual transmission. The electric shift units on the auto take a shit anytime between 30 and 100K. Sometimes twice., from personal experience.

[CS1983]

Had a 2001 Dakota. Got rid of it cus it was a PITA and bad on fuel.

[MrPrena]

I've never owned a truck, but my former company had F150 for me to use.