03 April 2024, my cousin just notified me that her 2000 Corolla had been totaled by an 18-wheeler. She's OK and no one was serioulsy hurt. She called me because she knew how much I was astonished with her car. That car had 530,000 no problem miles under its hood. I swear tpo you dear readers.

I bought a 2000 corolla with 150,000km on it in 2021. I bought this car for $2500 based on the condition under the hood was very little surface rust and the rocker panels and rear fenders barely had any surface rust. I have put 16,000km on it so far and plan to get well over 100,000km of use out of it all for $2500, so by the time you calculate depreciation of my purchase over the course of a number of years I’m doing pretty good. The thing I like best about this car is the gearing and torque with the automatic transmission. It will handle a considerable grade at highway speeds without downshifting which tells me Toyota nailed it when engineering this champion!

I might just keep buying 2000 Corollas. Mileage doesn't matter. History might, just to know what easy fixes I might be looking at (due to neglect). From an engineering standpoint, this has got to be the best car out there. You can fool yourself into Porsche performance or Mercedes 'engineering', but the design goal for a car is for transport, reliability and simple maintenance. My previous car was a Mercedes and I hated driving it, due to driving anxiety of constantly waiting for the 'now what?'.....My Corolla is pushing 200,000 miles, which was my goal but now I'm thinking 400k and even if I got another car, I'd keep this as a second. I maintain it better than any shop and nothing I've done has taken over an hour, most like ten minutes. Sure, I'd like more power and performance but in reality, where are you going to do that? Until I can afford track time, I don't care. 36mpg freeway works for me. Most people who brag like that paid well over 10x what I paid for my used Corolla.