My mixed experiences with Toyota's good reliability & high resale value

I had a Toyota Yaris CVT and my reference point of comparison is with a Honda Amaze that I drove for a similar number of years and kilometres.

BHPian Pycar recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I owned a Toyota Yaris VX CVT (top automatic model) for 5.5 years that I bought in 2018 with an extended warranty and recently sold it after driving for 60k KMS. For most of the years I owned the car, I really loved driving it with a few exceptions, which is what I would like to share for others to keep in mind.

Most people consider buying a Toyota because of its brand perception of good reliability and high resale value. On both these counts, I had mixed experiences (for context my reference point of comparison is with a Honda Amaze that I drove for a similar number of years/KMS before 2018 where the experience was much better).

On the reliability front, I had to experience some issues which were more than the usual ones most folks encounter:

Questionable OEM tyres:

Goodyear were the original tyres that came with the car but these had to be replaced in 2021 (technically 3 years later, however for a good 6-9 months during Covid in 2020, the car didn't really run much). The tyres had to be changed due to wobbling. I was told that I would have driven over potholes at high speeds due to which 2 tyres had varying degrees of problems and were replaced in the Guarantee period where I had to pay some additional amount. Did I really drive fast over potholes? Not really, I drove my car with great care, however, I would probably have driven on some random pothole in the middle of the highway because it wasn't visible during 80-100km speeds.

The new replaced tyres however didn't last long. I experienced 2-3 punctures in near succession and the side wall of the tyres wasn't holding up. So I went to a reputed car shop in Noida where I was told this problem is common with Yaris OEM Goodyear tyres (185, 60 R15) as the aspect ratio is less and I should upgrade to 185, 65 R15 instead. So I did the recommended upgrade and replaced it with Michelin tyres. Not only did problems disappear but ride quality greatly improved (I would highly recommend Michelin regardless of the price).

Noise & vibration issues:

Came across a weird noise when the car accelerated to 30-40m/hr speeds and the Toyota service dealership had to do multiple tests to identify the root cause. The tensioner on the car had to be changed (even though the belt was okay) and post my repair, I found this was a known problem with Yaris globally in European/US markets.

The vibration on the steering never resolved, I was told the engine mount had to be changed and that it was a significant cost so I should try to live with it because it was tolerable to most people.

Brake booster issues:

Since last year or so of driving the car, I used to get a weird ssshh sound like air blowing in the morning when I used to start my car. It was intermittent in the sense it used to appear on some days but not on others. I wouldn't really demonstrate this to the Toyota service team. However, while returning from one mountain trip, this noise became more and more apparent and came every time I pressed the pedal (driving back from mountains, brakes are used more downhill). On analysing, I was told something was wrong with the brake booster.

A brake booster is a hydraulic part that helps amplify the force exerted on the brake pedal, it's critical for power brakes to work. Unlike brake boosters of other manufacturers, Toyota brake boosters are not repairable as these cannot be opened and only have to be replaced. For most cars of this range, a brake booster costs 8-10k rupees, however, for the Toyota Yaris top model, the brake booster costs a whooping 42k just for the part alone (or you can say roughly 10% of the resale value of cost if you include repairs).

Why so expensive? Because Bosch which originally manufactured the part has stopped making it (I spoke to 8-10 Bosch dealers in Delhi) and you can only buy from Toyota and they will be putting in the same part as used in Lexus cars as the nearest match. The other option was to check with some scrap dealers as there might be a total loss accident car for which they might be willing to sell this part. The last part also I did, visiting and speaking to various scrap dealers but almost no one could help. I realised the problem that Toyota had only sold some 18-20k Yaris cars in India and the top automatic model would probably be 10% of these and it's hard to find a total loss car from 2k odd top models that would have been sold. I should mention here that parts for lower manual variants of Yaris were somewhat cheaper however weren't compatible.

While some issues were showing early signs during 5 year warranty period, I should probably have been more assertive with Toyota service dealerships as I feel their engineers didn't pay as much attention to my complaints. The issues of noise, vibration & brake really got accentuated post expiry of my 5-year warranty period, surprisingly unlucky coincidence. I had to end up spending a decent amount of money to get these issues sorted.

Resale

On the resale value front, I had finally made up my mind to sell the car after getting all these issues resolved. My expectation of resale value from a Toyota brand 1.5L petrol CVT was similar to or higher than a Honda/Hyundai 1.5L petrol CVT (i.e. Honda City or Verna). However, the experience was the opposite.

I found most Toyota cars have lesser resale value in the market than comparable cars from other brands and that is because they have discontinued many of their models.

To name a few, 1.2L Etios, 1.5L Yaris, 1.8L Altis have all been discontinued (while Honda City and Hyundai Verna are continuing in the market for many years). And market value of discontinued models is always lower because there is a genuine concern about the lack of availability of spare parts (as I had experienced). There is little room for negotiation with car dealers and even if you try to sell directly (as I did) the market had benchmarked itself to dealer rates (btw online platforms were showing me much higher rates initially but when I tried selling to them, their price came in a good 2-2.5L lower due to same reasons).

I do feel bad that all current owners of these Toyota cars might end up having a less-than-ideal resale value on their cars just because Toyota, the brand so many of us have come to trust, decided to discontinue their car models and thereby impacting their spares and general demand in the market.

That's all I had to share. I do feel I should share my experience with fellow owners. You can say that some of these problems I faced could be limited to my own car, however, some were generic to Toyota or Yaris brand in general and therefore it was worth calling them out.

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