This is an X-Runner. Honestly, I’d never heard of them until reader Brandon Baker pointed this out to me today. The Toyota X-Runner was a “performance” small sport truck manufactured from 2007 to 2013 – makes this model the last of the line. A unicorn. Looks like lots of cladding and skirts and flares, but it has a tuned suspension, a solid 4.0 liter six-cylinder engine, and a six-speed manual transmission.
The motor only produces 236 hp and moves the 3,800 lb pickup to a seven second 0-60 mph run. But seriously, CarMax….what’s with the filthy engine bay? Maybe that sells trucks.
The X-Runner is pretty basic inside – Bluetooth, rear view camera, a CD player, and cloth seats. What’s surprising is this was a $28,000 truck new in 2013, and eight years later it’s offered by CarMax for only $2,000 less! Says to me there is a following for these pickups – even high mileage ones. It’s a Toyota, so I wouldn’t pay for MaxCare on this one. And it’s a Toyota manufactured in Texas, for what that’s worth. Find this three owner sport pickup here in Sanford, Texas.
There’s a lot to like about this 2011 Mercedes ML63 AMG unicorn. Of course I have to start with the hand built 503 hp, 6.2 liter V-8 motor. A certain unidentified reader (we’ll call him Hans) who has another Mercedes with this same powertrain said it sounds like God gargling. Love it. When new, it sold for almost $100,000. This 2011 ML63 is sorta nearly new with only 37,000 miles on it – not even broken in over 10 years. The last ML63 I covered in January here was a 2013 model with more miles and more price. Me thinks this 2011 is not a bad deal. Buy MaxCare with the savings.
God is also thirsty, and this motor will guzzle gas – 11 mpg city, 15 highway, and 12 combined. Takes a lot to move a nearly 5,100 pound SUV. Stick to the highway. Or some light offroading since the ML63 is also AWD. But with the seven speed automatic the vehicle will do sub-5 second 0-60 mph runs, gas be damned.
The SUV is fully loaded with auto cruise control, read DVD system, heated and air conditioned seats, and even a tow hitch. Love the gray over tan colors. My wife thinks tan interiors look cheap. I think they look rich. My S600 has a tan interior. I win. Find this three owner SUV here in Hillside, Illinois.
Two years ago I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the 260 hp Chevrolet HHR SS unicorn and wrote about it here. Was even more surprised when a blog reader bought it! Well, here’s another one with lower miles and a higher price, but it comes with a five speed manual transmission. And 2010 was the last year for the HHR. The HHR forums suggest there were 916 HHR SS’s sold in 2010, and not a lot of them with manual transmissions.
The SS also included launch control and no-lift shifting for the manual transmission model, should you be so inclined, and while fun not necessarily fast at 6.5 seconds to 60 mph. I would have expected better for a 3,100 lb vehicle. Gone is the boost gauge in the A pillar that was in the 2008 model. Here’s the review from Car and Driver’s 2009 piece.
This car is damned clean with only 28,000 miles in 10+ years on New Hampshire roads. It’s a one owner, accident free car. It sold new for north of $26,000 and may not be a huge bargain at $16,998. But throw MaxCare in and you’ll be out the door for $20,000 with bumper to bumper coverage for another 125,000 miles until it’s 16 years old! Could be fun and not a lot of HHR SS models out there, and few in this condition. Find it here in Westborough, Massachusetts.
I’m curious what’s going on with CarMax inventory this month. I’ve not seen numbers this low even during the depths of Covid. I’ve written here and here, with the point being inventory tends to beef up before the end of the fiscal year (theirs ends in February) and drops off by fall. I’ve seen them carry over 70,000 cars nationwide and drop to 40,000. But 23,000?! This while industry analysts say used car prices are wildly increasing? I have no idea why – perhaps that’s why I just buy ’em and drive ’em and leave the thinking to others. I went in to my CarMax at Dulles in Northern Virginia to pick up a 911 for a test drive (below) and this was my view when wandering the lot.
Sales lot as gapped as an Appalachian kid’s mouth.
What I do know is that it’s still a hoot to be looking for my next unicorn. Yes, my plan remains to buy an enthusiast SUV first, then figure out what comes next, and yet when a decent 911 shows up I gotta try. This one popped up at my Dulles dealer at a reasonable price, albeit for a one (minor) accident car. CarMax now offers a TruFrame (I think) independent (I hope) report on cars with a reported accident that should give us confidence the car isn’t twisted. The real reason I wanted to drive this car is that I was persuaded the 991 (2013-2019) Porsche 911’s drove far more comfortably than my 2008 911 based on a test drive months ago, and I needed to revalidate that.
The short answer is yes…and no. When I dialed in all the most comfortable settings and drove like a commuter, the car was fairly civilized to drive. A little road noise from the summer tires but not bad. The problem was I kept choosing the most aggressive settings and wailing loudly down the exit ramps. The car is a beast. I loved it. And here’s the kicker. When I dropped off a book at the library for my wife, a beautiful young lady in leggings spotted me taking the selfie above and shouted “I think you should buy it!”. She was quite persuasive. I also just completed my latest 7,000 mile cross country drive (in the S600 – story for another day) and once west of the east coast I saw maybe two 911’s the whole trip. The car seems common in Northern Virginia and rare elsewhere. What to do? For the record, not one young lady gave my S600 a shout out. And for what it’s worth, as I’ve mentioned before now when you reserve a car for a test drive CarMax lets you add your intentions for trade in, financing, and best of all, MaxCare options. Allowed me to see what MaxCare would cost without begging a sales rep for a screen shot.
Let’s ignore that I seem to be wearing the same clothes in every CarMax selfie. I took this Macan Turbo home for a 24 hour test drive to get my wife’s take on whether it would be right for our “family” compact SUV. By “family” SUV I mean mostly mine, but one she would be comfortable co-driving on a family trip or taking to work when her potato Buick Encore is in the shop. She refused to drive my S600, my 911, or other wacky cars I bring home.
I really, really wanted to like the Macan, mostly because the Turbo has almost 40 hp more than the other baby SUV’s in the hunt. Yes, I dig the PDK transmission and matching rev downshifts that make me giggle. But two things ruled this car out. One is there is no smart key on the Macan. Seems silly but I’ve been ruined by my Mercedes and just don’t have the energy anymore to put a key in the dash and turn to start. The second was this goofy rear view mirror. I’m 6’4″ and the driver’s seat is always all the way back. No problem – plenty of legroom. But the mirror doesn’t accommodate tall people. Set at its widest angle, I got only a good view of the Macan haunches. Drove me nuts. What’s left?
The Mercedes GLC43 AMG next to my S600 in Boise.
To recap, the four compact enthusiast SUV’s we are considering are the Porsche Macan Turbo (fourth place) Audi SQ5 (third place), the BMW X3 M40i (second place), and the Mercedes GLC43 AMG (first place but haven’t taken one home for the wife to drive). I drove a rental GLC300 from Virginia to Kansas two years ago and it was pretty good. On my cross country drive to Portland I stopped by the Boise CarMax and drove the only fully equipped GLC43 CarMax has nationwide and absolutely loved it. We’ll ignore that I pulled on the lever to drop the second row seat backs flat, and on a whim wondered if I pushed on the button the seat backs would raise – instead the button broke off and disappeared in the wheel well. I’m sure that can be fixed. I would buy the GLC43 tomorrow but feel no need to pay the almost $2,000 transfer fee to the east coast. Will sit tight and see if one shows up closer to home. But I did shoot this downshifting shot and I gotta ask, for those of you who have rev matching automatics….does it ever get old? I so hope the wife likes a GLC! Then the hunt for my next true unicorn begins in earnest.
CarMax has a knack for poaching limited edition, low production, and ultra low mileage cars, and it looks like the accumulation of scarfed up first run Supras is no accident. CarMax currently has five of them – two for sale and three on hold or being transferred. Five of the 10 Supras CarMax has overall are Launch Editions. The first 1,500 Toyota Supras offered when the iconic model was reintroduced in 2020 were tagged as “Launch Editions”. The cars got a carbon fiber panel with the numeric designation on the dash, but other than some unique visual changes insie and out the car is the same as all of the other Supras. The first Launch Edition off the line, obviously #1 of 1,500, auctioned for $1.2 million as a charity donation. Toyota sold less than 6,000 2020 Supras of all kinds, so not a lotta them out there anyway.
The Toyota Supra Launch Editions in red and white exteriors have red interiors you can’t get in other Supras (thank God!) and the black models come with black interiors. All five of the Launch Edition models CarMax snagged have the optional adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, parking sensors, and rear-collision warning – an additional $1,195 over the $56,180 purchase price per Car and Driver – bringing the original sales price of these models to $57,373. The five CarMax models are selling from $52-54k, not much off of the original price. They also have less than 1,000 miles on the Serramonte, California, to just under 8,000 miles in Richmond, Virginia. Damned near new. No need for MaxCare!
Collectibles? Maybe. Maybe not. The Toyota-BMW partnership, and the availability of a higher horsepower BMW Z4 M40i for about the same price (used, from CarMax) dilutes, to me, the specialness of the new Supra. But if you liked the original classic and want a second chance at being one of the first to buy a 2020 Supra – and want a plaque on the dash that says so, perhaps you’ll appreciate these. FWIW – in 3 1/2 years this is the first Toyota unicorn I’ve blogged about!
The Toyota Supra, of course, is powered by the BMW 3.0 liter inline six good for 335 hp – 20hp more than the last generation Supra, mated to an eight-speed transmission, that pushes the 3,300 lb sports car to a 3.9 second 0-60 mph run. That’s about the same as a base Porsche 911 costing twice as much.
The cars. If you have better eyes than me, or can zoom in better, you might have a better take on the limited edition numbers. I also have the prices because all of them were saved to my profile when available. On any given day availability changes – the Harrisonburg, Virginia car became showed up again as available while I was writing this (it’s been on and off the market for awhile). Here’s what I got:
