Just thought I'd share my experience of buying/running what is increasingly looking like the best value vehicle I've ever had.
It's a 1997 Toyota Camry, 2.2 manual in a nice metallic red.
It was actually my in-laws next door neighbours car from new. He was offerred a derisory £500 trade-in from the local Toyota dealers and decided to look around instead to see if anyone else could give it the love and care he had lavished on it from new.
I picked it up for £600 including 6 months tax, a full tank of petrol, 9 months MOT and a bag full of touch up paints/metallic T-Cuts etc as well as a folder documenting everything the car had ever had done to it and the original Camry floor mats.
Needless to say it had a full service history and a recent cam belt change!
I actually felt a little guilty driving it away.
I've now had it 9 months and upped the mileage from 108K to nearly 130K. It drives like a new car (cliche I know but true!), I'm getting 36 to the gallon taking it easy, digital climate control does the job, sound system is one of the best I've heard, bags of room in the back for the teenagers (that's my own teenagers not any random teenagers I'm in the habit of picking up, just to make that quite clear!) and has a pretty good for the day 4 star EuroNCAP rating. It's quick enough, quiet and actually handles reasonably well on the twisties. On a recent 1100 mile round trip to Suffolk it felt like the most reliable, least likely to ever let you down lump of metal you could be in. It's also a reasonably handsome beast from certain angles!
So far I've bought 2 new front tyres (£50 a corner as they say in the business!) an air filter and set of plugs, an oil and filter change from National and the price of an MOT (passed needing exactly nothing doing to it last month).
The only problem is that in accordance the the bangernomic 'buy it cheap and then throw it away when something major goes wrong with it' maxim, I'm going to be lumbered with this for ever as I can't at the moment see anything going wrong with it! The only 'fault' as such has been a slight knocking coming from the rear over uneven surfaces and that looks likely to be worn bushes on the rear sway bar i.e. nothing to worry about. Everthing else on the car works exactly as it should do...even the lumbar support!
I feel slightly less smug than I would do if I had bought the car from a total stranger i.e. I knew it had been very well looked after without having to do any of the usual checks and homework, but still, it's easily the best £600 I've ever spent.
Has anyone else landed anything as good for the money or even better?
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I reckon you've found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I see a few Camry's and they all look how I imagine yours. I expect when you've finished with it as well, you will get your money back.
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i was buying a new car and giving away the old one to the dealer as i just didnt have the time to do otherwise, doing the deal on the phone, mentioned it to the guy sitting next to me at work (hot desks not a regular workmate), and he offered to buy it immediately
its still going several years later, only failed its MOT on numberplates having water in them and going dirty
great car, and great to see it in a better home
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KIA pride £50
The guy was going to scrap it because his daughter wanted to learn to drive in a car with power steering. He gave me a lift home from work in it and told me that was what the scrap yard ofered for it. I agreed to buy it that day.
1st MOT: £100 exhaust. £20 disc pads. £15 rear wheel bearing(my fault, overtightened it checking rear brakes).
Service: Oil & filter, air filter, cam belt & tensioner (superfluous - it had been done), fan belt. £70
2nd MOT: Zilch apart from MOT fee
Service. It had only done a couple of thousand miles so all it got was a new rear wiper blade from the local factors '£1 bargain bucket'.
Four months to next MOT!
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I havn't done that well for a while but once bought a 1650cc renault (can't remember the model now, 4 door thing, possibly an 18) Did thousands of motorway miles at silly speeds - it hummed beautifully at 95 ish, to my great surprise. Sold a year later at a profit. Managed the same with a cared for Cortina Auto -years motoring and a small profit. Your Camry sounds like a gem. I suppose few people would want it because they'd fear the consumption, but I guess they're missing out. I can feel your smugness from here.....
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Re The Camry - thousands of Dubai taxi drivers can't all be wrong. They tend to be the V6 auto version, but they do the job for mile after mile. The coolant system must be virtually bombproof if they cope with 50+ deg for year after year.
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I have no doubt that this Camry is just the ticket given the OPs requirement for a good bangernomics car.
But personally I find there is a bit more to motoring than just minimising cost. Is there a more boring car on the roads than a Camry? I doubt it! I think I would rather walk.
Edited by boxsterboy on 16/10/2008 at 22:30
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It also depends what you want a car for. If you have some utilitarian purpose in mind there is a lot to said for a good "banger". This Camry looks particularly good.
I know a guy who tends to favour old, high mileage, but cared for Volvo estates for work. Like me he notches up a fair mileage each year and also needs the loadspace. His cars never look scruffy as he chooses them carefully but they have never cost him any more than £1000 to buy. He looks to keep them for a year or two during which time he can add the thick end of 40k miles pa. He sees this as the sensible option particularly when the anonimity of an older car can be an advantage depending on the sorts of places it has to be left sometimes. I take a similar view with my Mondeo estate.
My friend has an automotive antidote at home in the form of a fairly new Merc SL500 which he keeps for weekends and out of the line of sight of his customers.......
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The OP referred to a recent 1100 mile trip. Wouldn't fancy walking that. Not with passengers and luggage.
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I've kind of changed my view of these things over the years. I suppose I used to be a terrible badge snob, trim snob, engine size snob......all that stuff. It very gradually came to me that you can have just as much fun in almost anything with wheels and an engine. It's about getting the best out of whatever you happen to be driving that is the most fun for me. Perhaps it's some kind of regression but anyone who cut their driving teeth on an underpowered Mk1 Mini or a Mk1 Escort with a wheezy X-Flow engine will know what I mean.
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you can have just as much fun in almost anything with wheels and an engine. It's about getting the best out of whatever you happen to be driving
Absolutely HB. Couldn't agree more, while at the same time being, part-time, every kind of snob under the sun. I suspect many bangernomicists are the same.
It is impossible to like the automobile without being able to live with all the contradictions it embodies, so another one won't make much difference.
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I have no doubt that this Camry is just the ticket given the OPs requirement for a good bangernomics car. But personally I find there is a bit more to motoring than just minimising cost. Is there a more boring car on the roads than a Camry? I doubt it! I think I would rather walk.
Actually a fair point and that is the downside, although I've never been sure I want my cars to be 'interesting' as such. I tend to equate that with the unexpected and plain inconvenient!
I have attempted to compensate for the 'pipe n' slippers factor' by adjusting the music played during journeys to some of my more adrenaline pumping selections....at the moment 'Hemispheres' by Rush wiles away the miles quite nicely!!
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Was this the first Camry that was badged as a Lexus model in some markets (Japan itself?) ?
If not, it's in my memory that a review said it ought to be, because it was of such high quality.
"There is a bit more to motoring than just minimising cost. Is there a more boring car on the roads than a Camry? I doubt it! I think I would rather walk."
Yeah - like a used Boxster my colleague has just sold with £16k depreciation in 2 years plus a load of mechanical grief and plain-stupid servicing and parts costs.
If you want something interesting/different/impractical, go for it!
If you want something to get 4 adults to somewhere 300 miles away in space/comfort/quiet with more-than-adequate briskness and economy, then, as a recent thread suggested, there's actually not such a HUGE advance with the latest Mondeo/Insignia/Avensis over their equivalents from 8 or 9 years ago.
It's only the number of airbags and NCAP stars that's really come-on, and £600 versus £18k more than offsets any increase in fuel economy.
Nice one, Luckless :-)
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Going back a couple of years, I sold a Renault 12 to an Irish Gent who wanted a cheap motor to ferry 4 men daily on a 60 mile round trip.
I warned him that the old car was a bit tired, but he bought it anyway. Six months later he turned up to return the car for free, saying that it was no longer needed, and that it had never missed a beat or let them down.
They don't make 'em like that anymore.
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The Gent in question as well as the car presumably!
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Sounds like a really good buy that Toyota -- real engineering from a time when big Toyotas really were head and shoulders above the rest for next to nowt, and the car still probably has another 5-10 years ahead of it provided the rust doesn't eat it up.
When you're bored with it, let me know eh? ;)
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But personally I find there is a bit more to motoring than just minimising cost. Is there a more boring car on the roads than a Camry? I doubt it!
I bet there is, and you could easily be paying £20k+ for it.
Sounds like a good deal - I'd stay away from the V6 autos, they don't often see 100,000 miles without considerable cost but what you've got sounds ideal.
Enjoy it!
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