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Ali Neller came home and found the 2001 Toyota Tacoma pickup parked in the driveway.

Her heart dropped. Had her husband Bill’s 1989 Toyota pickup finally gone belly-up? Had he bought this one on impulse? She knew how attached he was to his ’89, but she also knew what a hard life it had had.

This was not the time they wanted to add another car payment to the household budget. After all, there was the adoption process they were dealing with, praying it would bring them the child they both wanted so much.

Then Bill’s ’89 bounced down the unpaved driveway. And there was a passenger in the front seat.

Relief. It was That Guy from Boston in town again with a car he was testing out. And, gee, didn’t that red color (impulse red) really set off the new Toyota truck?

Once the origin of the new truck in town was sorted out and all heart rates restored to normal, Bill Neller couldn’t wait to check out the visitor’s wheels.

“Four doors. Wow! There’s only room for two people in the cab of my truck … and you better not have a gym bag or briefcase with you. If you do, it’ll have to go in the back [cargo bed with a cap],” he said as he climbed into the back seat of the 2001 V6 Double Cab 4WD truck I’d driven down from Boston.

“Gee, there’s plenty of room back here for a baby seat. And a diaper bag. And even another person. And you still have a cargo bed.

“I’ve got to have a ride in this before you leave,” he said. “How’s the V6?”

I told him the V6 was great, but the four-speed automatic had dropped out of overdrive a bunch of times climbing the hills from Farmington through Harwinton and on to Litchfield. “No problem,” he said. “I’d rather get one with a manual transmission anyway.” Yes, a five-speed is available.

I’d driven the Toyota down that afternoon to be on hand to attend the Litchfield Hall of Fame ceremony at which old friend and longtime Globe writer Joe Concannon would be inducted posthumously. Neller had a dual role. He was one of the organizers of the function and the executor of Concannon’s estate. In both roles, he’d asked me to stand up for Joe during the ceremonies.

On the trip down, the Tacoma Double Cab’s 121.9-inch wheelbase let the pickup handle like a car.

And the height (11-inch road clearance with the 4WD model) made for good visibility on the day following the first snowfall of the winter season.

Driving was a snap. The truck’s interior is strictly Toyota, meaning the controls are both minimal and intuitive.

The Tacoma was an SR5 (mid-level of trim), meaning it had chrome bumpers and outside trim, white-faced gauges with orange indicators, air conditioning, a digital clock, sun visors, and intermittent wipers.

Add a bedliner and CD player and the sticker was bumped up to $26,634 from the base of $19,786. All in all, it was a great vehicle for the 300-mile trip. The EPA estimates for this vehicle were 17 city and 20 highway, and it definitely was producing the latter.

Some will say the Tacoma is an old design (in its seventh year), but Toyota prefers to describe it as improved with three new versions for 2001 – the Double Cab we drove, plus a stepside (flared rear fenders) and sportier Prerunner edition.

Consumer Reports likes the Tacoma, giving the model better-than-average reliability ratings from 1997 on.

A nice interior touch was a pair of power outlets at the base of the dash. I needed just one for a cellular phone, leaving one free for many of today’s other lifestyle necessities. I eschewed a radar detector, preferring to use the cruise control to keep speed within reason on the Massachusetts Turnpike and Route 84.

The only drawback was that the seats were a bit small, clearly a design compromise to leave enough legroom for the folks in back, plus the 61.4-inch cargo bed with its four cargo tiedowns.

Compared to Neller’s 1989 (bought new for $15,500 with heavy-duty plowing package, cap and edliner), this Tacoma is limo-sized.

We had to make a trip to the community center to help set up for the evening program. “Let’s take the new truck,” I offered. “No, I’ve got all kinds of stuff in the back of my truck that has to be delivered,” Neller said. So, the two of us squeezed in (no room for baby here) and drove off.

“I’ve plowed with this every winter. I’ve lent it out. The back bumper cracked when we were pulling something and it rotted away after that. But it’s paid for itself many times over already,” he said.

“Now with the baby hopefully coming, I have to start thinking that my next truck will have to have more room. And it is amazing to see how far the smaller Toyota pickups have come since 1989.”

Our talk turned to mutual friend Joe Concannon.

“When he came back from Australia last February, we picked him up at the airport and went out to dinner,” said Neller. “It [the adoption process] was supposed to be a secret, but Joe and I never had secrets from each other and, over a glass of wine, I told him that the baby would have his name as a middle name – either Joseph or JoAnne or something like that – and we both got misty. Then he drove back to Boston and that was the last time I saw him alive. It was one time I was glad I couldn’t keep a secret.”

So that night, Joe – along with his dad, “Doty” Concannon – joined the Litchfield Hall of Fame together. It was a night for stories, old friends, and camaraderie.

Late at night, resuming the role of test driver, I drove the Tacoma home to Boston, with the sounds of Litchfield’s own Joan Schroeder playing on a CD through the six-speaker sound system and a lot of nostalgia in my heart.

Some times a test drive is about the car, other times it’s about the people who see the cars, use the cars and the lives we all lead.

Nice touch:

Toyota’s six-disc, in-dash CD changer is as simple as they come. You just slide the discs in like quarters into a parking meter.

Annoyance:

Sliding rear window. Not really under driver’s control in a Double Cab setup.