Forgot to add, I will say this. It's not just about what they are charging right now and inventory. You have to call many places, ask many questions, and each time ask what is inbound. Get them to look up exactly what you want inbound and also find out when they receive new information for allocations.
Yeah I hear ya, and agree! I've been shopping casually for many months, and intensely for a couple weeks. I would now consider myself a hardened veteran in the art of buying a 4Runner in post-covid 2021. I had to learn quickly
I started out close to home, at the Toyota dealer in Boise (where I've had some pretty bad car-buying attempts experiences in the past). I told them I intended to get a hold of a 21 TRD Pro in Lunar Rock and my salesperson just laughed at me. I guess that wasn't enough, so he brought his manager over and he laughed some more at my wife and I. They said "there would have been a slim chance of getting a 21 TRD Pro, but Slim's left town". Word for word. They tried to sell me some other options, and I passed. I told them I was confident I can find what I'm looking for. They reminded me that they've looked across the region, and that there was zero chance.
Well, I guess Slim didn't leave town after all. I found a few 21 TRD Pro's in Lunar Rock just down the highway, with minimal effort.
If you're reading this and have found yourself in a similar position, try the smaller dealerships. The larger dealers in my area (Boise, Salt Lake) had waiting lists 6 months+ long. A manager in Salt Lake literally hung up on me while trying to have him add me to a list. For TRD Pro's the larger dealers seemed to be getting 2 TRD Pro's per allocation. Interestingly, the small town dealers were still getting 1 or 2 allocated to them, but they were receiving very few calls, comparatively. So it was pretty easy to find the exact thing I wanted, unspoken for, just up the highway from me.
This is pretty obvious advice, but don't believe a word that a salesperson tells you. I know that my Boise dealer could see that there were several TRD Pro's in my desired spec in dealer inventories just up the road. But they just lied and said there were none anywhere to be found. If they weren't going to sell it to me, then they certainly weren't going to help lead me to it.
Regarding MSRP, it's all over the place. In very general terms, on a nation-wide level, I found that on the east coast, 4R's were going for MSRP. But west of the Rockies, it was a different game entirely. Dealers are doing market adjustments way over MSRP. When I called the dealer in the next town over, they had what I wanted, but at 5k over MSRP. They told me they "had to" because CA is selling 10-15k over MSRP. I called the next town beyond that, and they were 1k BELOW MSRP. You'll never guess where I bought.
