5th Aug 2005, 04:15

Thank you for your comments.

After a strongly worded letter of complaint to Toyota GB, the dealership was authorised to take the car back in February 2004 and keep it for as long as it took to sort out all the problems. This they duly did, and provided me with a courtesy car for three weeks.

The car came back feeling much much better, with everything bar a couple of rattles ticked off the list. However, a fortnight to the day after I got it back, the car was stolen from a London car park. CCTV captured it being loaded onto a false-plated recovery truck in broad daylight by three fluorescent jacketed gorillas. Neither car, truck or gorillas have been seen since, although with the amount of interest shown by the police (none whatsoever), I can't say I'm shocked about that.

Put the insurance payout towards a Mazda RX-8 230PS and so far I'm well pleased. My first "non Toyota" for nearly 20 years, but I just wasn't prepared to risk it again. Fuel bills scary though, as I suspect will the insurance renewal be! Ah, the joys of British motoring in 2005!

11th Aug 2005, 00:59

Wow, too bad about the Celica.

I just bought a 2001 Celica. (trying Toyota for the first time) I traded in my beloved Mazda MX3 GS with the 6cyl (beautiful car) for a slightly used (in Japanese standards) Celica. The car had 97000 KM, or Just under 60000 Miles on it when I purchased it. I had the car for about 20 minutes when I noticed a ticking sound coming from the engine. I then, took it to a Toyota dealer the next day, and they tell me the engine is shot. So here I am a Toyota owner for a little over 12 hours and the engine is gone. Luckily I had 2000 kms left on the manufactures warranty and they are replacing it with a new one. I have now been waiting 4 days for this car and summer is almost over. I now find myself asking is I should I have just kept my old Mazda, or perhaps I should have gone with my fourth Civic SI. Anyway, like you said service is great, and who knows, maybe I'm getting a great deal- A new Celica (engine anyway) for the price of a used.

25th Aug 2005, 13:09

It sounds to me as if you have thrashed this machine to within an inch of it's life.

2nd Sep 2005, 04:31

Thrashed it to within an inch of it's life? Not at all. Yes, I've driven it hard, but perhaps you know of another way to drive a car that produces peak power at a stratospheric 7,800 RPM and peak torque (of something limp like 138 lb/ft) at 6,800 RPM! This engine simply does not do "easy" unless you're just ambling through town, as it has no bottom end or midrange torque to speak of, and feels less lively than a 2.0 repmobile unless you're working it hard. That surely is how the engine was designed, and how it's supposed to be used. And anyway, apart from a slight coarseness, the engine never missed a beat.

All I can say is that my car had all fluid levels religiously checked every week, is always allowed to warm up fully before exceeding about 3,000 RPM, and has been serviced on the dot on a "no expense spared" basis. If that's abuse, I hate to see how it would stand up to someone who's really going to hammer it. I also remind you that the dealer service manager said many of the problems on my car were well known and documented.

Finally, I would also remind you that my last Celica (GT-Four) did 75,000 miles without so much as a bulb replacement needed. I'm not hard on cars, and this makes it even more galling that I had such problems.

My RX-8 has yet to put a foot wrong either. Toyota's loss as far as I am concerned.

12th Oct 2005, 16:43

I've owned a 2003 celica 190 for a period of 6 months and would say that it is a great drivers car.

Although the car has little low end grunt, it has impressive power once your moving and get into the right gear (similar to Honda VTEC). Please note that Cars that do not have traction control (190 in lieu of later T sport) can eat tyres.

The build quality does not seem to be what you would expect from Toyota. The interior plastic seems to scratch very easily, alloy wheels have been replaced on mine due to corrosion 6 months ago and a heat shield has recently become loose. Toyota dealerships have sorted the problems without argument under warranty, but the issues are annoying. The paintwork seems to scratch and mark very easily.

Running costs are quite reasonable. The car is economical and my insurance premium is less than the previous car (Honda Civic 1.6 VTI - which has less performance).

Despite the above, I would, but another one.

20th Oct 2005, 18:35

Hi!

My name is Anthony and I have a 2001 Toyota Celica that I bought at a dealership in Ontario, Canada. It had 25,000 km when I bought it. Its such a beautiful car, however, when I reached 60,000 km, I was driving home from work and my check engine oil light came on. I thought, this can't be right because I get it regularly serviced at Toyota so it must be a glitch. Not a chance! I checked the dipstick and it was BONE DRY!!! not a drop of oil in the engine. I had to fight with the dealership because it was 2,000 km over the 60,000 km bumper to bumper warranty. I don't know if you heard about Toyota engine sludging, but I believe this was the problem. After a lengthy battle with Toyota Canada, they rebuilt the short block engine cause of the damage caused by no oil. They had it for 5 days. The exhaust dose have a rattle also and they say that it's not a problem, but.. there's a rattle!! Now, I am at 119,000 km and just got serviced and was told that my transmission (manual) needs to be replaced at a cost of $6,000 cdn!!! I was wondering if anyone else has had transmission problems like a whining noise mentioned in one of the preceding emails.