Toyota Scours Country to Find a Nurse’s Replacement 4Runner
This heartwarming tale of a nurse and her special 4Runner has a twist which might make industry folks chuckle.
OK, first off? I want to say this is a genuinely a heartwarming tale. It’s also pretty old, as it happened last February. But the story of nurse Melissa Nagy-Deak and her Lunar Gray 4Runner is currently featured on Toyota’s media site, and there’s a twist here which makes the entire thing hilarious to me. In the interest of full disclosure? I should also state that my mom is a nurse, and I love to hear about nice things happening to them. The colossal amount of garbage these heroes put up with in the name of helping people is obscene. So here we go.
Melissa Nagy-Deak is a massive Toyota fan and wanted a new 4Runner — but she didn’t want just any 4Runner. She was set on a 4Runner TRD Pro in Lunar Rock, and since the pandemic has turned dealer inventory into a barren hellscape, finding one was no easy feat. When her dream rig turned out to be in Iowa, over 1,000 miles from her home in Pennsylvania, Nagy-Deak didn’t blink. She sent a deposit, grabbed a friend, and jumped on a plane so they could drive it back. This should have been the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship. Except it wasn’t. The 4Runner got totaled just one month later when she was rear-ended.
In attempting to replace her destroyed truck, Nagy-Deak contacted Carrie Cassens-Johnson, the salesperson she bought it from. But by that point, finding another 2021 4Runner in Lunar Rock was even tougher, as the 2022 models had rolled in, and the killer color was no longer an option. Things didn’t look good. Fortunately, Cassens-Johnson sent the request up the chain of command, and eventually, it caught the attention of Michael Boyland. As a regional manager, Boyland had access to internal search tools to find the perfect replacement — and he came through. Toyota even stepped up and covered the transportation of the 4Runner to a dealer near Nagy-Deak’s house. She was thrilled. Cue the strings and pass the tissues.
The part I found hilarious? Well, it turns out that the Lunar Gray 4Runner was pulled out of a press fleet in Atlanta, which for a normal person, sounds perfectly reasonable. But if you’re someone who actually has access to press vehicles, it might make you chuckle. Because while I treat all the cars sent to me well, I know that these poor machines are often delivered to journalists who have the mechanical sympathy of a hand grenade. Seriously, the life of a press vehicle can make the rental scene look like the lap of luxury. Now, if Toyota wasn’t Toyota? I might worry a bit about the long-term reliability of this former tester. Since it is a Toyota, I won’t. I’ll just smile at the thought of this lovely machine getting plucked from the clutches of the press fleet and delivered to a loving home — like a puppy getting adopted from the pound.
Photos: Toyota
Join the YotaTech forums now!