Hi everyone,
I enjoy looking at old toyota markets and researching prices. Especially for iconic cars like the AE86, for example, or the MR2. These cars, or similar ones, have had a wide variety of model years.
What I’m wondering is, if you buy one of these, are maintenance costs more like you’re taking care of an exotic car, or more like a typical recent Toyota? As in for example, is it cheaper to maintain and keep an AE86, or a 2014 Corolla?
Are there any models or model years to avoid because parts are no longer available easily? Anything else to know about owning these things in terms of after-purchase costs?
Once you’re over 15 years old more or less you start to find that the only new parts you can buy anymore are mechanical components, and everything else is either coming off other cars or being refurbished. I’m vague here because pretense is important- sometimes a car keeps getting made somewhere else and it forms an extended market, sometimes a single part has been in 2-12 different models and it never goes out of production, sometimes a single model year has an exclusive part and if yours goes out, the vehicle is functionally totaled.