I keep my cars for a long time. 200k miles is the usual, and that has held true buying used a little ways north of 100k miles already on the board.
If we designed for very long car life, the waste equation would look different.
Toyota does, and there are a small number of people planning on half a million miles. Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change?
All of the newer safety doo-dads are less reliable. Where I live, the road salt effectively caps effective lifespan of a car to 180-220k miles. The exhaust and suspension maintenance started to approach or exceed the cars value.
I feel for people living where they do that. I like long term car ownership and that seems like a curse right out the gate!
Can the car be treated, washed? Hmmm, our move to negative ground makes the salt worse. Positive ground cars would help a lot with corrosion, but we don't make those anymore. I never learned why that is.
I liked the overall performance of the Honda. Little things like slightly more aggressive gear ratios, steering and such were superior on the Honda. Economy was almost a push, but the edge goes to Toyota.
The Honda got my attention for service and repair more than the Toyota cars have. And Honda had the advantage overall. My Toyota was older than the Honda, both similar mileage, but the Honda failed earlier. Transmission. :(
I came back to Toyota, but wanting some of the creature comforts offered by Honda, I chose Camry this time. Excellent car. It's a serious, understated, very unassuming vehicle. It performs, feels better than a Corolla did, and still lacks the subtle things like gear ratios that are a bit more fun.
I live where one can put a half mil on a car, if it's up for it. Damn near did that on a Ford Expedition 2000's era vehicle. Guzzled gas, but man! I loved that one for a ton of reasons. Being an active family at the time, the Expy made sense.
For me having the thing just go when I do the maintenance properly matters more than the other aspects do. So, Toyota it is!
*I buy used, 10 to 20 years back, moderate to low mile cars, under $5k. No new vehicles for me. They simply do not make sense.
Now, current Toyota might be a turn-off for me too. The quality issues playing out right now seem worrisome. I hope they get past that.
I'm driving 2000 era vehicles because that was the sweet spot for people like me who will do their own work a majority of the time. I enjoy that, and I know it's done right. It's gone south a few times with shops and I really hate having to navigate that BS.
2000 to 2010, Toyota has me, but Honda is damn close.
So tell me about the Attitude please. Super curious about that. What's the big turn-off? And are you sensing a newer thing, or is this long term, basic?
No judgement or battle here. Just genuine curiosity.
- Difficult basic activities. Like you can’t talk to anyone without an appointment. When you need to talk about something they aren’t interested in talking about, they get busy.
- Aggressive & deceptive upsell on service, as in service advisor demanding an unnecessary $750 repair as a condition to honor a battery warranty.
- Trying to steal deposits for unfilled car orders. “Sorry, we can’t get the car you put a $1000 deposit on, and we don’t do refunds.”
- Ridiculous up charges, scammy deal accessories, ripoff financing and market adjustments. My sister was trying to buy a Grand Highlander, which was a hot car. I think Toyota punishes dealers by putting on allocation for hot cars, so they try to pump every nickel possible.
In my sisters case, it was so insane I was able to find her a better deal for an equivalent Lexus. Whatever contract the Toyota dealers have, they don’t allow the manufacturer to effectively manage the brand.
My experience with Honda is you get the usual car dealer fluff, but they aren’t aggressive. There’s also more dealers, at least in places that I live in, so there’s more competitive juices at work on the sales side.
I'm hoping they fix this. There's almost no other reason to buy a Toyota other than this reliability reputation.
It seems like the way to go now is a naturally-aspirated Subaru, which I ended up after all the Toyota dealers near me treated me like a chump (which apparently is common; Toyota doesn't have as much "say" over their dealers as other similar companies afaik). Subies have basically been iterations on the same engine for a decade (the FB series), and the brand cannot afford to do much goofy R&D. They're also still dealing with the head gasket reputation despite that being >10 years old at this point (almost 20).
Key thing is to change the CVT fluid at least at the 60k interval (some countries say to do it every 30k, but that seems excessive). The "it's a lifetime fluid" thing is a total lie; it's the "lifetime of the CVT", so when it grenades itself, that's its lifetime ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My most recent buy was a golden era Toyota and the difference is notable when I look at current models.
