alexanderstollznow

oh i didnt know that! thanks; i will drop that one when i am feeling really shirty. :)

thank you all very much for the replies to date. one thing which comes across quite clearly is the sense of balance in all the above comments. i have found that the french car owners - and this is probably true of owners of all 'premium brands' - tend to have difficulty accepting that most people own cars for transport, rather than projecting their supposedly superior taste to the world, and that one can really like a motor vehicle on the basis that it functions very well as a machine. my most recent experience with repair was only a few months ago. my ex had smashed her last corolla. i bought her an AE102; used, obviously, but with 129k on it. naturally, it developed a problem about 10 days later ie losing power intermittently, but getting worse over a few days. i took it to a mechanic; he said it just needed fluid top up and new plug leads and plugs! of course the problem came back an hour later. my conclusion was low fuel pressure. so, AutoOne had the parts in stock (tick). they were cheap ie $120 for fuel pump and filter (tick). bought a manual, also in stock (tick). back seat just pulled out and 4 screws to reveal the pump. 6 bolts to remove the pump. 10 mins to remove the items above the fuel filter for access. remove front wheel, and there is a nice big access hole in the wheel well to get at the filter. (multiple ticks). without having done the job before it was < 1.5 hours from when i drove the car into the garage till filter and pump were replaced. problem solved. experiences like that make you really understand why people buy japanese. alexander

thanks, william and seifer. seifer, yes it can be hard to sift out folklore from fact, but i think the best way to do that is ask for a range of experiences. have yours been good, bad, indifferent? particularly how do you like the aurion, and what did it replace?

but thanks for replying anyway. personally, i cant stand that whole attitude of feeling the need to malign other car brands, and their owners!, because you feel your own is better. i have personally made the point elsewhere that when i have looked on a toyota forum for help with a corolla (sydneyrollaclub) i couldnt help noticing that noone ever commented on other brands at all, let alone negatively. and they dont seem to be discussing irritating problems with their cars either. i am just looking for solid ammunition :)

hi all. i have just joined. i am not actually a toyota owner, but sisters and exes have owned 6 corollas between them, including a couple of high mileage and/or aged ones, without a single major repair job. my recent ex had an AE92R corolla (smashed it, again...), and currently has an AE102 corolla. similarly my father has had 2 landcruisers, and absolutely nothing went wrong with the first one in 450,000km. so, i have a positive view of this brand, to say the least. i do participate in an aussie french car enthusiasts forum, and while being interesting and lively, is also populated by people who endlessly disparage toyotas and toyota owners. they are constantly calling the cars boring, claiming that their reliability is overstated, and suggesting they are only owned by boring people who arent into cars. more specifically, one of the members there, who is without doubt the biggest self-stimulator i have ever struck on a discussion forum, frequently says things like ¨i have read that the latest model camry´s have a lot of problems compared with older models¨. so,i am interested to see what people here feel about these things, specificially: *is toyota reliability really better than other brands? *is that still the case with current and recent models? *what do people here feel about japanese styling, which is admittedly widely typified as a bit bland, compared with european styling? *what makes you love toyotas over other brands? *what does an owner of a camry - a car singled out by snotty haters as the epitome of dull transport - love about their camry? i just want to emphasise that i am not being critical of anything toyota; i am just trying to get some good info from the horse´s mouth so i can challenge these annoying attitudes. many thanks alexander. sydney (not that it really matters, but my little profile thing should say AE102 Corolla, as that is the one i am currently taking care of. i just cant change my profile yet. ta)