What’s your cutoff year for purchasing a vehicle due to the overuse and abuse of unnecessary, failure prone electronics, engine management systems, cost or other reasons.
You just gotta know which models are troublemakers and which not so much. I used to love rummaging through salvage yards but most of them won't let you do that any more. Fortunately there's other sources. We buy lots of wrecked cars through Insurance Auto Auction in order to get the mechanical parts; others, blown up, flooded, etc. to get the body parts. Example, a 2012 Ford F250 4x4 Crew with 360k and a bad 6.7 for $1500. The 4 doors were worth more than we paid for the whole truck. Every body panel was used to build a terminal hail victim with a good drivetrain - and what was left will still part out for decent money.Maybe this is off topic but.................
The old trucks/SUVs can be serviceable if one looks hard enough and is patient. E-Bay can be your friend here as there are actually guys that'll go to junkyards, tear parts off and sell them. SO the traditional 7 year expiration may not always be applicable. Like what? Well, I got a NOS overhear console & headliner for my Ram, even a dashboard, notorious for cracking apart, off of E-Bay. Grant it, THAT wasn't cheap but when NOS can't be found, no one makes a decent repo, you're kind of stuck . The advantage is you can reinforce the plastic as you see fit---something even an NOS piece wouldn't have.
The point of all this is newer, say post 2005, on top of being expensive initially and now outdated, few will rummage the junkyards like they will for the really old (1990s-early 2000s) trucks. And older vehicles often have repo companies as source anyway.
Drive one for a day; make sure you can live with that engine. NVH at higher RPMs can be quite annoying with them and resale is way off from its V8 counterparts. You'll get a better deal on a new 2.7 but personally I'd go for the 5.3, despite it having a bit less torque.I foresee me comparing a 2.7 new turbomax to an older truck that I'd pay cash for. The 6.6 gasser Silverados would tow great but I wouldn't want to daily something like that.
Wisest thing we can do with any early 2000s vehicle is just have a spare motor and trans to keep them running. Swap brake lines to Nickel copper or Stainless (rust belt states) and keep it fresh. I say stick to the V8s but thats meI have 412,000 miles on this one...
I have a spare engine to swap in when the original engine craps out.