I'm somewhat like this STRICK. I had aars all of my life and had never owned a 4x4. Keep in mind that I do not own a Tundra (yet) but I am working on it. I have had a sh1t ton of cars ie Honda's (4 of them), Chevelle, Firebird, another Chevelle, Buick, Cadillac, BMW 740il, Dodge, Pontiac Grand Am, Nissan, etc and the list goes on but I finally ended up with a Lincoln Navigator AWD and have decided on a Tundra. Now it's just a waiting game until I get the money together. What I can add is that once you go to a full sized 4x4 type vehicle you'll never go back. The gas mileage just isn't worth the trouble once you have all of this space, towing capabilities, power and 4x4 drive to get yourself out of spots your sedans would have been buried up to the their necks in.
The trade off's of having to learn to park a larger vehicle come easy after a few weeks of driving and the gas mileage is easy to conquer. You'll learn to drive less and more responsibly if and when the price of gas gets crazy. When gas was hitting around $5 a gallon my Nav was hitting my wallet hard. It gets far less gas mileage than the Tundra 5.7 iForce where I get 11.3mpg average consistently. Mostly bc this SUV weighs around a 1000 pounds more than the Tundra and I do 70% of my driving in town. Starts and stops are a killer and I like to hit the pedal so I pay.
But what;s interesting is that I've learned to plan my routes far better than I ever have which had led me to rack up almost HALF the miles I used to, spend less time behind the wheel, and more importantly put less wear and tear on the vehicle. Now that gas $$$ are less than half of what they were I really don't care about it.
I love the size, sitting up way way higher over traffic, strapping on the push bars to keep other drivers away, the power (nearly 1hp per cubic inch and 355ft of tq), towing just about anything under 10k pounds, the rack on top for hauling as well as the removable third row I use like a pick up, hauling my two big dogs and MIL (lol). When I lived up north I use it to pull all sorts of people out when in snowed or when there was ice including other trucks and vans. I made some easy cash that way!!! Most importantly the space since I am tall at 6'4".
It was easy to pick the Toyota for its reliability after looking at the big three and Nissan. I read through their most popular forums and was surprised by all of the postings of troubles. My bet friend of 25 years has had a longer list than mine of pickup trucks and he loved his Tacoma the most. He put on 330,000 miles before he traded it in, got a crazy price for it and it was running perfectly with no service record other than consumables. As a bonus the Tundra is by far the best looking of them all since it doesn't look all plastic and Transformer childs toy looking. It looks like a muscular man's truck.
I've test driven a few of them andcan't wait to join the club.