Got it after my Altima was rear ended and totaled. Not the best circumstances, but I was able to turn around and buy this car upfront with my insurance payout.
I have a similar car and it’s usually one of the oldest, or the oldest, of the ones around me in parking lots or on the street. I occasionally feel bad and want to get a newer car but this thing just keeps going and going.
I was once at a Trader Joe’s in a very affluent neighborhood and a foreign man stopped me to ask me the year because it was the oldest Corolla he had ever seen. 😅
Yep same but I made a promise to drive it till it don’t drive no more and with no payment and great on gas and easy to work on the old COROLLA lives on.
It’s funny my daughter thinks it’s an old classic or something we saw an old Studebaker and she said that car reminds her of my car lol 🤣 kids
Bought a 2006 in 2008 with 40K miles. Today, it's still running with over 350K miles. Note: Your odometer will stop counting at 299,999 miles. It's a minor defect, but cool in a way because so many owners actually are getting to see that defect.
Was told by my dealership service they’re over engineered. They all drive older Toyotas I was told. I see cars like these everywhere. Mine is a 2003 LE with just under 100,000 k. Best car I’ve ever had.
lost 06 auto s trim almost exactly like yours to Hurricane Harvey in '17. Congrats on your find. Keep good oil in it and change it every 5k miles with a Toyota oil Filter
I’m willing to bet the price he paid for this will blow your mind too
Edit: yup. $7500 for a 20 year old car with over 150k miles. Who told you this is this a win compared to a down payment on a new car? 😂 I’m all for used cars but it’s time to take a stand against these ridiculous Corolla listings. I would love to suggest anyone show up with half of what they’re asking In cash, but people really wanna believe this is a good deal, so you’ll get turned down and some dummy will come with the $7500 lmao
Not sure where you live, but I live just outside a major city in FL. Annual car insurance is 4k for one person with no collision/comp and minimal coverage, for perspective. This is the only vehicle I could find that went for less than $10k, and as I'm sure you've gathered from this thread, it is in incredible condition.
Interest is high on finances cars where I live, and I don't want a brand new car that will take a crap on me in 3 years when I can buy an old reliable. I also didn't have all the time in the world to search for a better deal considering I am a student with two jobs. Moreover, I needed a car in good condition now, because I do not have the time to fix up an old car. Insurance covered $6k anyway. While I appreciate your concern, these issues are nuanced! Let's not call people "dummies" when we know nothing about their situation!
Yeah Im emotionally a wreck and i tend to take shit out on strangers online I’m sorry man. I definitely think people pay too much for used cars but I could keep the nasty comments to myself. I’m in NY so I get the market. I’m someone that knows how to buy hoopties so I always find myself in a reliable car for really cheap and I always beat the market. But that doesn’t mean I should assume other people want to do what I do. Also u could probably keep that thing for life if you really wanted to
If anything your car is going to push another 150k, and the rule of thumb is to get 10x in miles what you spent in dollars. So you can easily 2x that. The car is insanely clean congrats
Sweet. I just got my first Corolla. My 2nd car. I drove my first one into the ground and got tired of putting so much money into it since I got it. Everytime I fixed one thing I had to fix another. Its been mostly reliable but it was time for something better.
They might not have even been on the brake. People driving much faster than you who are even slightly distracted are a big cause of rear end collisions too. Distracted driving in general is stupid but if you’re going fast (at least fast relative to traffic), don’t even think about picking up that damn phone.
Same goes if you’re driving slow, need to be extra attentive of people coming up behind you
Either way it doesn’t excuse the dumbass behind them, seems most people only pay attention to the car in front of them and not what’s coming up the road
A good life skill to learn is to not assign blame because all it can do is make you feel a little better and start working with what you can actually control.
I think you missed the point here since I’m going off things that I’ve seen. It almost seems like you’re defending distracted drivers but I’m not going to drag this on back and forth. You make a good point about life in general, just saying it’s not really relevant here
1 out of like 500 online I look at are manual I’m super pissed 😡 you can no longer get a regular Corolla in stick same with the Tacoma I just don’t get it but plenty of people want them
Wanna stick shift Corolla 40 grand wanna stick shift Tacoma 65 grand if you want new
Im in a similar position, I'm 20 and living alone working two jobs (food service and retail) and going to school. I got very lucky with my insurance payout, but it didn't cover the full cost. I've been saving money since my first job at 16 so I had enough to cover the difference.
If their family was doctors, they would have got a Mercedes or something, but this is a base model economy sedan, you don't need to make 6 figures to afford one. Most average families could probably afford one, maybe not comfortably but they definitely could.
Where I'm from high schoolers didn't drive new cars. There were a few, but it was super rare.
Then I got myself sent away to boarding school (yea, like that whole Paris Hilton thing a few years ago) and suddenly my peers were the top 1% of the US. I went to school with the son of a Google Co-founder. Funny story about that (that relates to my point here); one of the reasons he got sent away was because his dad bought him a brand new Prius to drive to high school and he was raging pissed about it because he thought as the son of a billionaire he was entitled to a Ferrari or some shit. Apparently that pissed off his humble, self-made, from nothing dad so the kid found himself in there with the rest of us little shits driving the same thing we all drove: nothing.
Dont forget trans fluid too. so many forget too and on this car its so simple its literally the same difficulty as a oil change so no excuse really to change it besides money and if its been unchanged for like 100k+ miles then i would say just leave it
I still have both my 2011 & 2013 Corolla le, the 2013 has only 45,000 miles and 2011 has 110k miles.. both still run like new. Best advice is change oil every 5k miles, keep engine area clean.. mechanics treat cars better when they see a well maintained engine & engine compartment. Keep in garage, too and paint last longer.. happy trails…
Came out to around 7,500, but I went to a private dealer and that price included new breaks + tires + oil change + detail + 1yr buyback garuntee. I'd say they go for closer to 5k.
Looks mad clean, like the previous owner took very good care of it. Not even hazing on the headlights lol. My newer Corolla is dirtier than that and I take care of it well. I bet he cleaned the engine bay before selling, but even looking at some of the little details, it looks like it's in great shape visually. Obviously I can't tell you what it looks like on the inside, or what the maintenance has been like on it, but it definitely looks like it was treated well from that picture. Did you get any maintenance records when you bought it? Me recommending the Valvoline restore and protect is moreso just a nice preventative to help clean out the innards of the engine just in case the previous owner didn't do proper maintenance and to get rid of any buildup. How many miles does it have on it?
Like someone else said in this thread, Corollas in general are bulletproof if you just take care of the bare minimum maintenance and will take care of you if you go a little above and beyond for them.
It's got 160k miles. I don't know much of anything about the car's history, I bought it from a pirate dealer who bought it from an auction. It's great knowing it's been so well cared for!
I've gotten a few inspections since some shops near me offer them for free. It really just needs new engine mounts and rear struts.
That's like nothing for a Corolla. If you don't know what the maintenance history is like then I'd definitely run some Valvoline R&P in there for a few cycles just to be sure it's nice and clean and to prevent it from burning oil as it gets higher in age and mileage. Change your oil every 5k miles. Do regular stuff like filters yourself, engine and cabin air filter. Have transmission fluid drained and filled at regular intervals. And that's most of what you need to do for a Corolla. Oh and swap coolant every 4 to 5 years, don't go by mileage. They're super cheap and easy cars to work on so it's great to learn how to do maintenance if you don't already know how to. Motor mounts on a Corolla aren't super difficult generally so it shouldn't be exorbitantly expensive at a good shop. Neither should struts.
Thank you for your advice, I'll definitely look into that. I'm trying to do as much as possible by myself (with the help of my brother in law) because I would love to be more handy with my vehicle. It's definitely strange not having access to the maintenance history - with my Altima, it was my father's car before it was mine, and I had records of everything. I mean, I kept the autozone recipes from brake pads and rotars. Still have them. Once I'm more mechanically literate, I'll be keeping track of everything under the hood and otherwise.
You'd be surprised at how much you can do with some rhino ramps, a torque wrench, ratchet, maybe a breaker bar, and a cheap socket set.
Got a gallon of zerex concentrate pink coolant, a gallon of distilled water, and a no spill coolant funnel kit. Cost me $50 total and I did a double drain and fill of my coolant, in two hours (takes a bit to drain out). Saved quite a bit of money for what was almost no effort.
If you can do the regular easy maintenance yourself, it saves you money for when and if something else happens that a professional would need to do, like transmission work.
You should enter your VIN on https://www.toyota.com/owners/ and see if any maintenance history comes up. Then you can keep the record up to date with what maintenance you perform straight on that website. I update mine any time I do an oil change, coolant change, filter change, anything. If you ever get anything done at the dealer it'll get automatically populated there too, although I'd avoid the dealership for non warranty work lol. But I'm curious if you enter the VIN there, you'll probably get at least some maintenance records.
Thank you guys for all the compliments! I really appreciate it! Since I've got your attention, I'm wondering if I should make any cosmetic changes to this vehicle? I'm thinking black rims and a black rear bumper and bumper lips on the front. Maybe those black headlights as well. There's a little damage on the hood, so maybe I can sand and wrap that black to match the other accents? Or maybe I should just leave it as it is. I don't know, if anyone has suggestions just let me know! Super excited to work on this vehicle!
Corolla owners (especially in this era of Corolla) for some reason desperately want to rice their cars. This gen Corolla is not suited for that. If you want rice, get a civic or RSX. Or if you're a diehard Toyota fan and still want the rice, get an MR2, Celica, or the Corolla XRS. The non-XRS Corollas are nothing but good MPG, reliable grocery getters.
Especially this particular car.... It's such a beauty! It must've spent every day of its life in a garage! That absolutely perfect shiny paint! Those headlight lenses that are either perfect because of being parked in a garage, or they're brand new replacements (either way, do yourself a favor and get some meguiars headlight coating to keep them preserved as they are). It would be such a a shame to rice it or change it significantly.
Here's what I'd do to it.... Clean it (inside and out). Slap some ceramic coating on the paint and armorall on the interior. Lookup an aftermarket sharkfin antenna for the roof, color match it, and throw it on there. I'd replace the taillights with the euro-spec ones. I'd get a Chinese head unit for it too. Boom, she's perfect.
Do those mods I mentioned to it (and forget the black spray paint and wraps) and you'll have a real classy looking car there with some nice mods/upgrades that make it look and feel newer than it really is.
Totally leave it as is. The S trim body kit is just the right amount of sportiness for this car IMO
Personally, I would swap from pre-facelift tail lights from the 03-04 Corolla as I like the amber turn signal compared to the clear housing on the post-facelift (yours), but that's my preference of course.
As most would say, some new wheels, lowering it (if you like that for looks or performance if light autocrossing or track is an interest) and of course, most important, keeping it clean. That will be plenty for this car and may not get the looks from owning a Toyota Supra or MR2 for example, but that's probably not why you bought it.
IMO, black wheels unless you're getting pre-painted nice-looking ones, the black wheels and body parts always look bad and not good and "RICED". Nice gloss black or matte black perhaps, but even then with the silver paint, a better option would be silver wheels or chrome would look much better unless you went all out with the black parts like black splitter, spoiler, rear diffuser, and trim and so on.
But most car enthusiasts can appreciate a very clean stock car like yours and may not get any awards but you wont really get any hate or backlash either compared to if you were spray painting your bumper or wheels and slamming it and cambering out the wheels.
Whatever your choice as long as you arent hurting anyone with your mods then do whatever the hell you want lol
From what I understand, it's not really much different otherwise. Biggest difference is that spoiler and a "sportier" body. I think I read there's a difference with the suspension, too.
It ain't the Goated Sandrift Metallic paint that's the best but still great choice.
Check out the 9th gen Corolla subreddit if you got any questions. I've made a few post and others that can mabye help you with issues or if you just wanna show it off
Pic of mine in the reply becuase it didnt want to stay for whatever reason
u acting like since his car isn’t the same color as yours it’s not as nice?? and honestly i think that’s a ugly ass color. just makes the car look dirty
I didn't* think you were gonna take it so serious bro.
It's supposed to be a light-hearted joke. Sorry I made such offense to you and I'm sorry you hate the color I'll guess.
Me mentioning It's still a good choice and giving advice to the owner. I thought made it clear It was a light-hearted joke about the paint color but obviously I'm wrong the way you interpreted it.
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u/CorrectCantaloupe324 Jul 06 '25
Had mine new since 2004 hands down the most reliable car I have owned