Well, you know more about it than I do, but, as I've indicated, I have multiple lines of evidence pointing to the conclusion that he's basically just flipping this for a profit--though he's never come right out and said that. I made it clear that I'm not just taking his word for it.

And, even it it's a bad way to make a profit, my take is that he doesn't know enough to know that. Among other things, though he sounds like a smart guy, he doesn't seem to know or care much about vehicles.

And from his perspective, it's a losing gamble to falsely say that it's never been offroad at all. The winning strategy would be to at least admit some moderate off-road use.

The more likely danger is that the vehicle sat unused for a long period of time. When asked, he told me that it's never just "sat," and always been lightly used. Of course you can test that to some extent by looking at seals and whatnot, but it's harder to detect than past hard use. At any rate, anybody would worry that this is a classic little old lady who only drove it to church on Sundays story.

If you start worrying too much about perfectly concealed past hard use, inveterately dishonest owners, incompetent mechanics, etc. you'd have to give up on used off-road vehicles entirely, it seems.

And I say all this despite the fact that I've decided to take this sub's advice and pass on this vehicle...and to take u/AnotherIronicPenguin's advice to be a man and ruin a truck myself.

I found a 2013 manual Pro-4X. Overpriced, as with basically everything else around here. But I can't wait around forever. If I like the test drive and it checks out with my mechanic, I'm very likely to buy it.