my current 4runner warranty/service plan covers all scheduled maintenance, filters, lubricants, etc. for the first 100k miles. However, I do have to bring it in yearly, even if the next oil change isn't due based on milage alone.
its certainly a money play, but also keeping their vehicles in good working order helps with a lot of metrics like resell value, longevity, etc that car buyers look at. i think toyota is the largest buyer of used toyotas.
No matter how many times we look elsewhere, we always end up back in Toyotas. Hoping their EV R&D shows promise soon.
We got a 2017 highlander and apart from the god awful infotainment system it has been amazing. Sort of like computers these days, I find myself wondering when I’d need or even want to upgrade.
It hasn’t really needed service yet after 80,000km. Everything is running well. My mechanic says I must be taking excellent care of it, but I’m not doing anything I haven’t before. This thing just seems to be better designed than any VW or Ford I’ve had.
Our previous Toyota was OLD but similarly rock solid. I’ve come to like their cars a lot. A friend has a 4 runner as well that has been going strong for around 15 years.
I think what’s remarkable isn’t necessarily having something incredible to say about their cars. It’s more so that I just have nothing to complain about.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnWKz7Cthkk [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTPnIpjodA8 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFnVZXQD5_k
Toyota Recalls 1993 Camry Due To Fact That Owners Really Should Have Bought Something New By Now
https://www.theonion.com/toyota-recalls-1993-camry-due-to-fa...
I shopped Toyota for a trucks several times and was appalled by the MPG ratings. When a Tacoma is getting far worse MPG than a F-150 it's time for an update.
Why isn't the Dodge and lineup regarded as reliable?
Ford E-series is how old?
Most of Nissan's sedans are pretty long in the tooth now that I think about it.
A large part of why Toyota stuff is so reliable is that they're expensive up front both new and "newish" used. They also won't finance just anyone with a pulse like the "unreliable" brands will. So the people who get their hands on them can afford to maintain them on schedule and can afford to treat them well. You'll never see a newish Sienna owner stacking one floor to ceiling with bags of concrete to avoid paying for the Home Depot truck rental. You'll never see a newish 4Runner bouncing down the road with an out of round tire. You'll never see a newish Camry dragging ass hauling a family of 5 and all their luggage (the person with that use case in the Toyota tax bracket can justify/afford a Highlander) Can't say that about a Pacifica, Patriot or Altima.
Refinement certainly helps but Toyotas are reliable because any car would be reliable in the hands of Toyota owners. Any car would routinely make it to high mileage if they got babied for their first 100k (or so)
This has not been my experience. Toyotas are just better built coming out of the factory. In the past I've had newish Chevy, Ford, and Nissan cars, and after about 30-50k miles each of them started having various small noises/rattles that built over time until something failed. The Toyota is just smoother overall out of the factory, and parts wear out more slowly.
0. Scotty Kilmer - internet famous mechanic in Houston TX - https://www.youtube.com/user/scottykilmer
Well, they did come up with the Prius, so I think they might have a shot at EVs.
If you don't hit all the tropes and get people to share your content and get all the resulting clicks the algo will bury you.
Having said that, I recently took my Acura (Honda) to a local service station because the timing belt was quoted at near $2k and I got it done for ~$900 at a local service station. New water pump and another belt were included (as they would have been at the dealer).
What really frustrated me was the messages I was getting from the dealer. When should the timing belt be replaced? First it was 90k miles, then it was 60k miles, and because I was below both it was after 7 years (it's been 10). The other thing, for my model, some sources said "if it breaks, your engine will be damaged" but the dealer wouldn't tell me either way. I even contact Acura USA and they wouldn't contradict the dealer. Whole thing left me wanting a Toyota/Lexis.
Toyota has good vehicles as far as I can tell, but their ignoring of me has put me off of them.
For my next vehicle, I chose a different brand, and the vehicle had some issues, but that manufacturer made things right with no hassle.
I don't know which is better: a vehicle that will most likely be good with a company that doesn't care, or a vehicle that has some issues but with a company that does care and fixes it.
https://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2016/02/5-times-you-c...
https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/21528/what-rep...
If you have a specific problem that they refuse to fix, then there's Lemon law.
This is like saying you refuse to play any game in the Call of Duty franchise because GameStop charges $70 instead of $60 for it.
If you're going to the dealer for anything other than warranty or free repairs, then you have too much money and need to be relieved of it.
- My late grandfather who was a master mechanic retired from a dealership who once sold horses and buggies in the SF Bay Area.
I owned a Chevy Equinox and took it to a dealership for work around 80,000km (my numbers might be off, this was 5 or so years ago). They told me the transmission fluid had met it's suggested replacement. I wanted to keep warranty valid so I approved the work. Somehow I then found out that the manufacturers recommended interval was like 200,000km. I was only required to follow the manufacturers schedule not the made up dealers recommended schedule. If you ask, they give you some BS about the "local climate and amount of construction dust so we recommend different intervals etc etc". Either way, you aren't required to follow those schedules.
I never returned to that dealership or any other with the car because it was clear that although they sell the cars they know almost nothing about them.
But yeah, your story is unfortunately a usual ordeal at dealerships.
as long as they are under 10 years old and have covered fewer than 100,000 miles
In North America it's very common for cars to have this many miles long before the 10 year mark.
Somewhere between ~8k and ~9k, according to a random BBC article I found:
FHA says the average is 14,300 miles a year, but 12,524 miles per year in our most populous state (California)
I guess that means the average American will hit 100,000 miles in 7 years.
https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-miles-dri...
An independent mechanic found and fixed the issue with no hassle.
Never again will I waste my time with dealerships, or any mechanic with a diagnostic fee. Far too easy for them to say “sorry couldn’t reproduce the problem, that’ll be $150”
She said the car was always serviced at that dealer and the service writer said there is no way to prove that.
I mean by that logic no work can ever be warrantied, who knows if someone went and opened up your oil drain plug if 10 miles out of the shop your car dies and it looks like someone forgot to fill it back up with oil?
Literally the only benefit I can think of for dealer visits outside of exotics is that they're usually high volume enough that in cases like this they can come up to bat for a regular. That's it.
The dealer is making a calculated (at scale, not in any particular case) business decision that these people have enough money that they'll just bend over and take it rather than create a hassle for themselves by fighting.
If the dealer hadn't made business decision the service writer would be apologetic and offered a steep discount or whatever. But they did so the service writer is playing hardball.
Not the business decision I'd make but I completely understand the incentive.
When I got it back the check engine light was on and the car was idling rough where previously it was just notifying of scheduled service and running fine. The dealer took another look and determined that I had a bent intake valve. They quoted me $15,000.00 to fix it.
They claimed this must be my fault, probably downshifting on the highway. I noted that the car ran fine when I dropped it off and a missed shift would bend more than one valve. Also, they were just doing service in the intake near the valves (with a media blaster) and that the car had 30 more miles than when I dropped it off. It seemed obvious to me that any engine damage was done by them. They insisted it was "impossible" that the damage was done by them.
I said not to do anything and that I would tow it to another shop for another opinion. Strangely they suggested I could drive the car to another shop (with a bent valve?). I had it towed and the other shop determined that one of the new spark plugs had the electrode pinched shut so it was shorting out. They also noted that the coils did not look new. They installed a new plug (~$12.00) and the car ran fine. To be sure they also did a compression test and found no evidence of a bent valve.
I went back to the BMW shop and got all my money back for the service. The service writer still had the balls to tell me that I "should be prepared for expensive service bills on these cars". I wonder how much of that reputation comes from shady dealerships ripping people off. I suspect quite a bit.
I have no proof but I think the dealership sabotaged the car on purpose. There's no way any inspection would have missed the shorted plug. The car was immediately warning of the condition after startup and was misfiring badly.
Dealerships absolutely will rip you off if they think they can get away with it.
Tech probably just screwed it up because flat rate techs are always racing the clock.
If you were just dealing with the service writer the tech probably never even knew you had issues with it until the situation was too far gone to salvage.
Even if the plug was improperly gapped from the factory (or dropped on the floor) the tech would have to miss that and the fact that the car ran worse when he finished than when it arrived. And that the computer said things are worse.
It's either malicious or so incompetent that there's no practical difference.
I talked to the tech on the phone before finding out about the plug. The tech definitely knew I was having trouble. Interestingly the tech did admit it would be possible to bend a vale doing the media blasting. I guess that's why service writers exist to "manage the customer".
It doesn't really matter if someone else worked on it or not. It would be highly unlikely the engine would still be running without oil, and the dealer would immediately tell her she came with no oil in the engine, not that her oil pan is stripped.
So long as this doesn’t make service even more expensive, at least I’d get something for it that I don’t today. At the moment I tend to instead trade for a newer car once the 2-5 year warranty runs out. This would be cheaper than that at least.
Ultimately when she pressed them on it, they agreed that the warranty would only be voided as to issues that would have been caught during such service call, but which were not caught and then got worse.
This is every business decision!
It's great that Toyota has measured the improvement in customer trust or loyalty being more valuable to them in the long run than shirking on quality.
I only wish more companies would do this!
That's a funny way of framing "feeling the heat from the Koreans and Mitsubishi and offering their own comparable warranty"
At the end of the day, you don't actually need to abide by the warranty and you can still have your standard warranty period if you don't follow the rules.
It came with a service card where the price of each service check was listed. And while the price didn’t exactly double each year, they grew exponentially and would have ended up more than doubling the price of the bicycle.
I ended up forgoing the warranty and decide that a new bike was a better option.
A Honda service can easily be double that due to replacing the timing belt.
I didn’t see it in the article, but I wonder if that includes getting all of the dealerships “suggested maintenance” if you want the warranty extension to apply. I’ve had lots of sketchy dealership overcharging experiences, and if you need 5 dealership service visits to get up to the full 10 years, I can see this “warranty” costing thousands of dollars in unnecessary/fake maintenance. I’m sure that there are good actors out there, at dealerships too, but it is easy to be abused.
This seems like a tactic to bring in more money, not one that Toyota is just doing for the sake of standing behind their products. Most cars can last beyond 10yr / 100k miles, so I don’t think this costs them much. But to get the dealerships to charge you $300 for a cabin air filter a few times will probably make them more than they lose.