Am I missing something?

Yea, an adequate down payment and talking about a car’s price in monthly payments. It’s not isolated to Toyota or a 4Runner

A 4Runner that costs $50k is going to cost the same monthly as a $50k BMW X3 with the same loan terms.

I have a 2022 Toyota Highlander Platinum AWD, a $55k vehicle and my payment is only $278/month because debt is expensive to take on these days so I take on minimal

Yeah it’s much more reliable, hindsight being 20/20, but I don’t like it otherwise. I passed it up when shopping originally, test drove one and didn’t care for it. Too big feeling, feeling bigger than it is while driving with floaty, disconnected handling and too much roll. Sorento felt much more agile and was considerably faster, both in feeling and objectively and was fun to drive when it was working. I came from a tuned GTI and really wanted the smallest 3 row I could find that had decent acceleration and handling. Bigger isn’t always better. A brand should have more than just one good model going for it, but Kia’s a one trick pony. Too bad they couldn’t deliver telluride quality control to my Sorento’s

Didn’t correlate to my personal experience. Had a 2021 Kia Sorento SX Prestige X-line for 12 months, only to be replaced under lemon law with a same trim 2022 Sorento which I had for another 3 months before trading it in. Worst 2 cars I’ve ever owned. Tons of problems, some major, some minor. Now I’ve been driving a 2022 Toyota Highlander Platinum AWD for 16 months, not a single problem or frustration. A breath of fresh air in comparison