Just had the problem of my twenty year old Toyota Avensis Estate Car fail It's Mot
Unfortunately It was to expensive to Repair .
It had given me a lot of stress and anxiety
trying to have to let it go.
To the great cube in the sky
However taken consideration reference to the safety If repaired .
Ie lots of rust and corrosion
and needed a full rear subframe and welding .
So decided to give It up and have It scrapped
Which was easier than what I thought .
we had a 2003 Avensis and it was brilliant. Unfortunately we had to sell it when i was made redundant in 2009.
We now have a 25 year old Toyota Corolla 1.3 auto with air con that is still going strong and see no need to sell it or trade it in. We are the second owners and it has 114k on the clock. Still get over 40mpg. Our next car to replace it will be another Toyota possibly a Corolla or Yaris.
A work pool car was involved in a nasty multiple vehicle accident involving scrap metal, a loose trailer and an HGV that lost a wheel. My colleagues walked away with severe bruises, because the vehicle was nearly new & had all the air bags, which activated. The pool car was a write off.
My much older car had just the one airbag in the steering wheel and if I’d been in the same place on the road, I’d have been badly injured because the pool car was rammed on the side door. So I replaced my car for peace of mind, even though it was going strong, as I did a lot of driving in it for my work.
Kept the MH until it was 25 years old though!
I sold my Volvo V70 that I'd had for years when it got to 18 years old. The main reason being that I was starting to struggle a bit getting out of it, and I needed something with a higher driving position. There was very little wrong with the car, even though it had over 180,000 miles on the clock, and in the first year of ownership its next owner put another 35,000 miles on it. As far as I know it is still going strong now at nearly 22 years old. It was a 2.5 diesel automatic.
My current car, a Nissan X Trail diesel automatic is quite new by comparison as it is "only" 13 years old. It seems to be still in good nick, and has 122,000 on the clock. I intend to keep it for as long as I possibly can and it may well be the last car I own before I have to give up driving. I will certainly keep it until it is no longer economic to repair or I have to give up driving, whichever comes first.
Yes I agree iankO1
Toyota's are good value and reliable
I've Had Toyota cars since the seventies
When I worked for a Toyota Agent
Who where A British Leyland Franchise
And almost going out of Business
Before Switching to Toyota
Then the Sales escalated and did very well.
When I retired
from work in 2009 I almost gave up my Toyota Avensis Estate due to finances .
But decided to hang on to It .
As needed for everyday travel and holidays etc
Hence I got another 10 years grace out of It
Proof of Its Durability
My dad always bought BL,cars but the quality got worse. He bought one of the first Toyota Corollas and had a couple.
They did go wrong or leak oil! Like most of that era did rust !
------------- DS-There's more to life than football!!!
I have had two Toyotas, one a Corolla in the mid-1980s and the other a Spacecruiser in the early years of this century. Both were reliable, but the Spacecruiser was diabolical to drive on icy roads with only the front seats occupied. It had a nasty habit of going sideways under acceleration or braking, and if I hadn't been skid-trained as a bus driver I could easily have got into serious trouble with it. It was also VERY heavy on fuel. 18mpg at best. Despite that I liked the design of it and it drove well in good conditions or when loaded.
The Corolla was a good reliable car but rust killed it in the end. I don't remember having any mechanical problems with it.
I know my MINI Cooper was just a car, however I had her from new in 2002 and did over 200k+ miles on the clock by mid-2017.
What I had spent on her to keep her going for that long could have bought me a new MINI with a very good specifications.
The last straw was the ECU developed a fault and MINI UK wanted nearly 2k GBP or so to fix. Shortly after that the catalytic convertor blew requiring nearly 1k GBP to replace.
I felt it was as if she was asking me to let her go and go to car heaven, so I did.
She was scrappd for 100 GBP and I cried when she was taken away.
I have many fond memories with that car, and it was very difficult to let her go. I swore I would not be so emotionally attached to another vehicle again.
I had hoped to keep her going alongside the new MINI Countryman that I had taken delivery just a month or so before her ECU and cat failures. It was not to be.
I was not attached to the Countryman, and I handed her back to end the finance last June 2020 as I did not want to tow a van with her anymore.
I still miss the thrill of driving my old MINI Cooper to this day.
DK
------------- Apple The Campervan - A Van For Work, Rest & Play!
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- 2026: FR+DE
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'24: 10/49; '23: 9/47;'22: 8/46; '21: 9/34
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When we were in Australia every taxi we went in was a Toyota Camry, also used by the police as well as Hi Lux pickups.
They are also favourite for trades people rather than vans.
They still do,the old model Land Cruiser there, big square beasts simple and reliable. Go for ever if looked after.
A Land Cruiser is on my list if I replace the Hyundai, still available as diesel short or long wheelbase auto transmission, 5 year warranty.
A bit old school but great.
I like the new LR Defender but it's pricey and LR reliability not the best.
We have a 2019 Mini Cooper convertible, it's a lot of fun and well built.
------------- DS-There's more to life than football!!!
Quote: Originally posted by 664DaveS on 24/10/2021
When we were in Australia every taxi we went in was a Toyota Camry, also used by the police as well as Hi Lux pickups.
They are also favourite for trades people rather than vans.
They still do,the old model Land Cruiser there, big square beasts simple and reliable. Go for ever if looked after.
A Land Cruiser is on my list if I replace the Hyundai, still available as diesel short or long wheelbase auto transmission, 5 year warranty.
A bit old school but great.
I like the new LR Defender but it's pricey and LR reliability not the best.
We have a 2019 Mini Cooper convertible, it's a lot of fun and well built.
I have always liked the look of the Landcruiser, but I have heard they can be rather thirsty.
Strange isn't it about the Land Rover and reliability. I always remember them as being practically bullet-proof. I drove one as a breakdown truck for a garage back in the 1960s. It was probably one of the original ones as it was old then and looking very scruffy as it had clearly had a hard life. My mate and I who used to go out with it told the manager it was about time he got a new one, so he said "if you can break that one I'll buy you a new one." We never did! We tried everything short of ramming it into a wall, but whatever we did it still went and did everything we asked of it.
We had loads in the RAF S3 when I first joined then later 90 and 110 diesels. They were well maintained but did get some stick from the troops!
I liked driving them, don't recall many breakdowns.
I had a S3 noisy, slow but dead easy to fix and great fun off road.
It would be worth a fair bit now.
I would like a S3 Air portable but they are a bit expensive now.
------------- DS-There's more to life than football!!!
Quote: Originally posted by 664DaveS on 25/10/2021
We had loads in the RAF S3 when I first joined then later 90 and 110 diesels. They were well maintained but did get some stick from the troops!
I liked driving them, don't recall many breakdowns.
I had a S3 noisy, slow but dead easy to fix and great fun off road.
It would be worth a fair bit now.
I would like a S3 Air portable but they are a bit expensive now.
That old one I drove at the garage was beaten-up and tatty. It looked a bit of a mess and was a bit on the noisy side, but it started first time every time and I only remember it breaking down once. A clevis pin in the clutch pedal came adrift, fixed in 10 minutes. There was nothing on it that couldn't be fixed with a few spanners, a screwdriver or two, and a large hammer. No computers, no electronics at all really, and the most basic of wiring. It seems the more sophisticated they became, the more troublesome.
Quote: Originally posted by 664DaveS on 25/10/2021
We had loads in the RAF S3 when I first joined then later 90 and 110 diesels. They were well maintained but did get some stick from the troops!
I liked driving them, don't recall many breakdowns.
I had a S3 noisy, slow but dead easy to fix and great fun off road.
It would be worth a fair bit now.
I would like a S3 Air portable but they are a bit expensive now.
Old Land Rovers were reliable as long as they were maintained properly. The problems started when the started to make more sophisticated vehicles for the mainstream market. The biggest problems were (and still are) with the electrical systems. Up until the early 2000's Land Rovers used Lucas electrical parts almost exclusively, and as any classic car enthusiast will tell you, Lucas electrics are not the best quality. You could be fairly safe in assuming that if your Discovery or Range Rover suddenly stopped working, a Lucas part somewhere had released the blue smoke of death. Mechanically, they have always been very durable, but have always been plagued by electrical problems, even the new ones.
Quote: Originally posted by 664DaveS on 24/10/2021
They still do,the old model Land Cruiser there, big square beasts simple and reliable. Go for ever if looked after.
A Land Cruiser is on my list if I replace the Hyundai, still available as diesel short or long wheelbase auto transmission, 5 year warranty.
Those "old" looking proper Landcruisers are the proper deal and are sold brand new even today. They are rugged and relatively easy to fix in the bush as no facilities to plug in a computer to tell you what is wrong with the vehicle. My son drove one as a daily drive and one year they got flooded out the it end up half submerged in mud and water. After dragging it out all that was required after being submerged for 3 days was a hose on the engine. It started straight away.
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Topic: Mot car failure
via mobile 22/10/2021 at 9:31pm
