St. Cloud Toyota Official Blog

With summer finally gone and fall taking over, residents of St. Cloud, MN are starting to feel the same old chill we’re used to. Whether you own a new or used Toyota car, it’s important to get your vehicle prepared for winter before it arrives, which is why our service technicians here at St. Cloud Toyota are more than ready to handle any type of maintenance your vehicle needs. We want to take a minute to educate you on the importance of winterizing your vehicle so you’re fully-informed before you visit our service center.

Our winterization procedures start as simple maintenance checks. We begin by making sure your oil is fresh, your filters are in good shape, your fluids are filled, and your brakes work properly. After all, if the engine of your 2020 Toyota Camry isn’t working at peak performance, it won’t be able to adequately handle the cold. That’s why we make sure all of your vehicle’s internal components are performing like they should, so we can catch minor issues before they become major problems.

From there, we look at your tires. If you’re currently using all-season or summer tires, you might want to consider upgrading to winter tires, which are better-equipped to handle snow, ice, and slush. These tires are specifically designed to stay soft in sub-degree temperatures, and they also have deeper treads that can easily grip the road and maintain traction on snow, ice, and other wintry road conditions.

When you’re ready to get your vehicle ready for winter, come into our Waite Park, MN Toyota dealership. Our certified mechanics will make sure your vehicle can handle anything thrown its way. We hope to see you soon!

As you know, St. Cloud Toyota was recently nominated Best New Car Dealership, Best Used Car Dealership, and Best Auto/Tire Service in Central Minnesota. To find out our secret to success, the St. Cloud Times recently interviewed our general manager, Tom Findley.

St. Cloud Times: Why does providing vehicle sales and service to Central Minnesotans matter to you?

Tom Findley: I have been a part of this community my whole life, and it has been great to be able to give back to our community. I believe the most important things we can do is continue to take care of our own and stimulate our own economy to help Central Minnesota continue to flourish.

SCT: St. Cloud Toyota has served the St. Cloud area for over 50 years. How has the business grown and changed over time?

TF: To sum it up, I would say nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. We still want to offer our great family-oriented customer relationships and service, but it has now gone from fax, mail, and in-person to everything electronic. We live in a “now society,” so only about 10 percent of our customers want to wait for a car to get fixed and/or order a car; everyone else wants to drop it off for service and leave. And they all want to swing in and pick up their car without ever really going through the buying process in the dealership. With all the technology available, if you want to be successful in today’s business you need to adapt to that strategy.

SCT: What’s one thing most people don’t ask when car shopping that you think they should ask about?

TF: “What decision would you make if it was for your or one of your loved ones?” Service and sales people do this for a living, so I would want to know their opinion. I always ask that when I’m purchasing or fixing something.

SCT: What’s one thing about St. Cloud Toyota that most people don’t know?

TF: We’re an extremely diverse business. We are a very welcoming environment for all of our employees, and we strive for employee satisfaction.

It’s a pretty crazy time to be St. Cloud Toyota right now. Our Toyota dealers in Waite Park, MN have been in business for over fifty years now, and our main mission is to make sure every single one of our customers leaves our dealership happier than when they arrived. It appears that our continued hard work has paid off, since St. Cloud Toyota has been named Best New Car Dealership, Best Used Car Dealership, and Best Auto/Tire Service in Central Minnesota.

“I have been a part of this community my whole life, and it has been great to be able to give back,” said Tom Findley, St. Cloud Toyota’s General Manager. “I believe the most important things we can do is continue to take care of our own and stimulate our own economy to help Central Minnesota continue to flourish.”

For over fifty years, St. Cloud Toyota has offered heartfelt, family-oriented customer relationships and service, and we continue to make that our primary goal. We’ve been able to adapt to our changing society so we can offer you the quickest and most efficient service we can. Your votes mean the world to us, and we are so incredibly honored by this show of support. We thank you for your unwavering support, and we promise that we will continue to look out for you and your vehicle needs above all else.

Stop by St. Cloud Toyota, located at 418 2nd Street S in Waite Park, MN, to view our wide inventory of new and used Toyota vehicles. If you have any finance questions, feel free to pay a visit to our finance center, where we can walk you through all the steps of the car-buying process. Our service center is open every day but Sunday, and we guarantee our service specialists will give your Toyota vehicle the care it deserves. Once again, we thank you for your support and hope to see you in our showroom soon!

When you drive off the lot at St. Cloud Toyota, we’re thrilled that our customers have found the perfect Toyota cars to match their lifestyles. However, we all know that you’re going to need to keep up with its monthly maintenance. And there’s no better place to do that than at our Waite Park Toyota service center. Today, we want to talk about some of the basics of an oil change, and why we’re perfect to keep your Toyota running for years to come.

The oil change – it’s something that everyone needs to do, but not a lot of people know exactly why. Sure, they know it’s bad to put off for too long, but that doesn’t stop a lot of us from going thousands of miles past our recommend changes. Here’s the problem with that: the oil in our engines is designed to keep things as cool as possible by reducing the friction of the dozens of moving parts in your vehicle’s engine. As your oil gets older, it thickens and accumulates particles and debris, which make it heat up faster than normal. All that heat causes more wear and tear to your vehicle’s engine, which robs it of performance and shortens its lifespan.

That’s why you need to get your 2019 Toyota Camry taken care of at St. Cloud Toyota – our team of dedicated experts will provide your vehicle with a once-over while adding in some quality oil to keep your vehicle running strong. And if we find anything wrong with your vehicle, you can rest assured that we will use only original Toyota equipment to ensure a long life and perfect fit. Stop by today for your next oil change!

There’s a lot to do in the Waite Park, MN area with a reliable pickup truck. So imagine what you can do with a newly-redesigned classic: the 2020 Toyota Tacoma! We’ve got a first look at this new Toyota vehicle, and today, we’re going to share with you some of its best characteristics and tell you why you need to take it for a test drive as soon as it hits the dealerships in MN.

The Toyota Tacoma has always been a midsize pickup that’s been renowned for its mobility and capability in equal amounts. That’s why with the available direct-injected 3.5-liter V6 engine with 278 horsepower and 265 lb-ft of torque can haul up to 6,800 lbs for the ultimate utility or an incredibly fun ride.

Speaking of fun rides, the 2020 Toyota Tacoma can also be optimized for off-road adventures, with available Multi-Terrain Select (MTS) and Crawl Control (CRAWL). MTS gives you the choice of five terrains to choose from, and when engaged helps regulate wheelspin by modulating engine throttle and traction control to the optimum settings for specific terrains. CRAWL is even more amazing – essentially a Cruise Control for off-roading, this incredible new feature adjusts throttle and brakes on 5 low-speed settings so you can keep your eyes on the road, or lack thereof.

Don’t think Toyota has neglected the interior, either – Toyota is bringing Apple CarPlay® and Amazon Alexa compatibility as standard features to every 2020 Tacoma on up to an 8-inch touchscreen to give you access to your favorite apps as you blaze your trail. An available 8-speaker JBL sound system is also available for premium sound quality.

The future is now at St. Cloud Toyota – as soon as the 2020 Toyota Tacoma arrives on our lots, be sure to take it for a test drive. It’s going to be quite an experience.

St. Cloud Toyota knows that Toyota isn’t usually the first name that comes to mind when people think of sports cars. Toyota’s made a name recently in efficiency and reliability, rather than luxury performance. However, Toyota is getting ready to shake up its reliable, tech-savvy brand and break into the high-performance market, thanks to one upcoming vehicle in the lineup: the 2020 Toyota GR Supra.

The Toyota Supra is a legacy sports car last produced in the US by Toyota in 1998. But now it’s getting ready to tear up the tracks once again, with a turbocharged 3-liter V6 engine belting out a thrilling 335 horsepower and 365 lb-ft of torque. Send that power through the Toyota’s 8-speed ZF 8HP 8-speed transmission, and through an electronically controlled rear differential, and you’ve got a vehicle designed to dominate whatever road it’s on. Raw horsepower meets modern technology in the 2020 Toyota GR Supra, making every second on the street count.

Inside the 2020 Toyota GR Supra, Toyota has updated it for the 21^st century. The exclusive Supra Connect system gives you access to a wide variety of features such as Automatic Emergency Calling, Concierge Service, and Battery Guard, to tell you when your battery runs low. An available Supra Connect iPhone® app gives you remote access to your 2020 Toyota Supra, straight from your phone. Apple CarPlay™ comes standard, which allows you to integrate your smartphone directly with the dashboard, so you can access your apps, music, and navigation completely hands-free.

So when the 2020 Toyota GR Supra comes to our lots, you’re going to want to get to our Waite Park, MN Toyota dealership for the fastest, most intense Toyota test drive in decades.

St. Cloud Toyota knows that the vast majority of Toyota cars for sale at our Waite Park, MN dealership have busy families they want to protect on the road. So, to make sure that our safety standards are always top-notch, Toyota has been making more of their new models with standard advanced safety features than ever before, and today we want to help explain some of them.

One phrase you’ll see a lot is Toyota Safety Sense™ – this is the umbrella name for the suite of advanced safety features that comes standard on many new 2020 Toyotas and will be increasing in availability as the years move along.

Arguably the best safety feature of Toyota Safety Sense has been Dynamic Radar Cruise Control. This takes Cruise Control into the age of self-driving cars – using radar mounted to the front of your Toyota, this feature reads the speeds of the vehicles in front of you while at cruise the highway, altering your Toyota model’s speed to stay with the flow of traffic, even coming to a complete stop if necessary.

But Toyota Safety Sense has other life-saving technology included as well. The Pre-Collision System with Pedestrian Detection utilizes the camera and radar systems to detect obstacles in front of the vehicle and can use emergency braking to help you avoid a collision. It’s a vital component that makes your commute safer for everyone.

There are several other features that you can try out for yourself in a new 2020 Toyota car at St. Cloud Toyota. So come in today for a great deal on a new Toyota or other pre-owned cars to make sure your next vehicle is as safe as possible. See you soon!

St. Cloud Toyota prides itself on offering some of the most fuel-efficient and safe vehicles on the road today. Our Waite Park customers have made us one of the top dealerships in Minnesota, and there’s nothing better than finding the perfect vehicle for someone who’s looking for quality Toyota cars. However, sometimes our customers are looking for something a bit more exciting than the standard Toyota lineup of SUVs and crossovers. We always direct customers looking to push their drive to the limit to the 2020 Toyota Supra.

A reincarnation of a classic Toyota sports coupe, this 2020 vehicle is sporting Toyota’s newest engine –  a 3-liter inline 6-cylinder with a twin-scroll turbocharger, capable of putting out 335 horsepower and 365 lb-ft of torque. It delivers the response, the sound, and the power that racing fans crave. An electronically-controlled rear differential provides next-level road analysis and syncs your engine and powertrain to provide maximum power at a moment’s notice, so you can maneuver how you want, when you want. As you drive, the full-color Head-Up Display provides you with your speed, navigation information, and more.

In terms of the 2020 Toyota Supra tech, the Supra Connect technology suite provides you with an array of in-car features, like real-time traffic info, automatic emergency calling, and concierge service. When connected to your iPhone via the Supra Connect iPhone app, you can do even more, right from your phone – like activating ventilation and locking or unlocking your doors. Of course, advanced driver-assist features are also available in the Driver Assist Package, like Dynamic Radar Cruise Control, which can maintain the distance between you and the car in front of you.

So get ready for some extreme speed this fall. The 2020 Toyota GR Supra is coming to our lot soon, and our Waite Park Toyota dealers would love to give you a test drive.

If you’ve been waiting for the perfect opportunity to lease a Toyota car, then trust us when we say that now is the time. St. Cloud Toyota is offering great deals on some of our most popular Toyota models, and it’s time that we let you know just a couple of them right off the bat so you can figure out what kind of lease you’re looking for when you come into our Waite Park dealerships in MN.

For starters, the 2020 Toyota Corolla is available to lease for as low as $190 a month for 36 months with $2,000 due at signing. You can drive a brand-new Corolla for three years, enjoying its innovative features like the available 8-inch touchscreen and standard Apple CarPlay® compatibility options. The remodeled exterior and interior make this the most futuristic and aggressive-looking Corolla on the road to date, helping it stand out for all the right reasons. And with fun features like a power moonroof and available premium seating and upholstery accents, you can get a huge bang for your buck with your Corolla.

But say you’re looking for something a bigger. Why don’t you give the 2019 Toyota RAV4 a try? This five-passenger crossover SUV is designed to show off the comfort and technology of a Toyota vehicle while still being able to hold its own on more challenging terrain. And it does that with the addition of a very intuitive Sport, ECO, and Normal driving modes that marry a combined link suspension to maintain traction, reduce body toll and keep handling responsive. And best of all, if you have a lot of supplies to take on your camping trip, you can use the RAV4’s available 3,500-lbs towing capacity to bring whatever you need. And right now, you can lease this model for as low as $235 a month!