Prior to the failure of my corolla's engine, I was frequently getting recall notices for various parts of my vehicle including airbag, power window, and accelerator faults. It was HIGHLY stressful and annoying to receive recall notice after recall notice. Around late September/early October, my engine started experiencing inconsistent idle speeds. My mechanic as well as the Toyota dealer could not determine what was the cause for the idle issues. The only answer I was given, was that it possibly needed a new engine. About a month later, the car stopped working outright. The car simply would not start. I took it back to my mechanic as well as the Toyota dealer. After one month sitting at the Toyota dealership, they finally came back to me with the diagnosis that the engine is "shot". It is completely worn out and can not start. They said the compression test was failing at 120lbs and Toyota says required PSI should be 150 minimum up to 190. It is highly distressing to see a car coming from such a reputable company, fail outright at a much lower mileage than their other cars from previous years.

At around 80,000km my car experienced classic symptoms of a fuel pump on the way out. I took it to Toyota who blew me off and told me it was nothing to worry about.

After SEVEN MONTHS of taking the damn thing in to every mechanic under the sun who all thoroughly enjoyed ripping me off, not to mention the car either not starting, humming loudly or struggling to maintain a consistent fuel consumption, another Toyota dealer finally listened to me and found the fuel pump to have an internal fault.

Toyota head office then refused to honour the warranty, claiming that I had put in dirty fuel. However, once they realised this problem had been going on for seven months (therefore impossible to call it a dirty fuel issue), they removed their comments on the system about it being my fault and then replaced it with the car being out of warranty (which it wasn't!).

I will NEVER buy Toyota again!