rev up your engines, today to set things straight, I'm gonna talk about the
biggest vehicle mistakes that Toyota has made, I see a lot of naysayers say, Oh
Scotty he's just paid for by Toyota and says how great their cars are, hey I've been
working on cars for 51 years, I'm not talking through my hat, there's a lot of
guys out there talking about stuff, what experience do they have, they don't know
squat, yes Toyota makes great cars, but like anybody else they've made mistakes
too, the first mistake I'm talking about is
the 85 Toyota Camry diesel, yes believe it or not they did make a diesel Camry
they didn't sell that many of them the United States, and it's a good thing they
didn't, it was a turbo diesel and it had no power at all, and the engines were
weak, the things broke all the time, the customers and I had back in the day that
had them, they hated them, they said oh man this is one of the worst cars I ever had
what's going on with Toyota, that's back in 85 Toyota was trying to build up their
reputation, they took that off the market reasonably quickly, they didn't want to
be known as not having good cars, it really wasn't in style with the idea of
the Camry anyway, a standard transmission slow diesel engine, that's not what the
Camry is about, look at them now they're luxury cars, they ride like dreams, so
that was really an extinct line like the dinosaurs, that line of Camry just went
and they gave up with that, at least in the United States, now here in the United
States, Toyota's pretty much stayed away from
diesels and they've said recently that they're gonna be phasing out diesel
production worldwide anyways, a lot of companies are because they pollute a lot
so Toyota didn't even make these diesel engines they were putting in the camrys
it was a mistake to make them in the first place and at least they figured that
out and stopped selling them in the United States pretty quickly
now the next biggest mistake car Toyota ever made was the 1997 Cavalier
thank goodness it was only sold in Japan and not in the United States, because
they were just rebadged Chevy Cavaliers that were sold in Japan, GM and Toyota
had some deals going on back then, you remember the Chevy Nova well that was
really a Toyota Corolla in disguise, they did all kinds of weird stuff, but they
hardly sold any of these cavaliers in Japan, called them cavaliers put a Toyota
marque line on them and there were just chevy cavaliers made the United States, I
guess they were planning on starting to sell GM Cavaliers in Japan and thought
oh this would be a good idea, but I guess the Japanese were too smart for that one
and whoever did buy and probably said, hey these cars are pretty crummy we don't want
to buy these things and they hardly sold any
of them, now the next mistake as far as I'm concerned that Toyota made, was the
Toyota Tercel they were somewhat reliable cars when they first came out,
but then they put bad valve seals, they burn oil, and as they evolved for a few
years put in these insane side draft motorcycle style carburetors that were
always breaking down on the thing, the Tercels had such a bad rap that
mechanics like myself and friends of mine called them Toyota turd cells, and
really if you're going for that range of a car, pay a little bit more and you would
have gotten a Toyota Corolla that would run
forever, not burn any oil, that was just a mistake that they made and they ran it
a while and they sold quite a few of them but in my opinion they were a mistake
they weren't that great cars, they road crappy and since they did burn oil and
that horrible carburation on them for years
don't ever think about buy one of those, unless you're a fan of oddball
cars and you want to collect them, now the next
failures for Toyota is Scions, they decided to make a line of cars calling
them Scions, having only four-cylinder engines, and selling them to the youth
market, Scions in the United States went from 2002 to 2016 and then they gave up
with the idea, now this is an odd mistake as far as I'm concerned because the
Scions themselves were pretty good cars they were all four-cylinders, you little puddle
jumpers, you get ones that were pretty zippy that were based on Lexus engines
and chassis, but just the idea of not calling them Toyota's, what was Toyota
thinking, they had to make scion dealerships and create all that
paperwork and stuff, they were still Toyota's they just decided to call them
Scions, but to me boy that's a waste of an awful lot of money, just in the
bureaucracy behind a thing, selling Lexus Toyotas, that was a smart move because
that was a high-end car, I guess in that aspect Toyota got too caught up and marketing,
some of these focus groups must have given them really bad ideas to branch
off, I mean they're still making the same basic types of cars, they're fine cars,
all my customers with scions are totally happy with them, whether they got the
slower ones, or got the really fast ones they were happy with them, but the whole
idea of making it another branch and calling it Scion, it's kind of stupid if you
think about it, now the last Toyota mistake I'm
gonna talk about is, Toyota and making of sports cars, now Toyota was never really
a big sports car company, my Celica it's not a sports car, it's a Toyota Corolla
with a different body, with a sportier body on them, you know it's not a sports car
by any stretch of the imagination now Toyota's first big sports car was a
2000 GT made from 67 to 70, but I believe I only made 351 of these things, and
guess what it didn't even have a Toyota engine, it had a Yamaha engine in it, that's
something that Toyota has often done with their sports cars, the only real
sports car that they made and mass-produced and
sold in the United States, were the Supras that had an inline 6-cylinder
engine, but that engine was made by Toyota, it was an inline 6 that Toyota
made, it wasn't made by anybody else, now in
an attempt to make the Celicas more of a sports car, after mine they made the 2zz
ge engine, and put them in the Celicas and again this was a Yamaha designed
engine, it could be a pretty zippy car with a six-speed standard transmission
in it, but it only went fast at very high rpms, it had a special VVT system that
kicked in at really high rpms, but there was a problem with that zooming, and the
problem is, it only had good acceleration at really high rpms, but it had a weak oil
pump system, and when you're going on high rpms a lot of times they would
cavitate, then the pump would suck air and that engine going at those high rpms,
when it lost the oil pressure goodbye engine, every single customer
mine with one of those was on their second or third engine by the time I
gotten to them used, it wasn't well designed, now the engine itself was an
interesting fast design, there's guys that changed things, put in bigger oil
pans and heavier duty or oil pumps, and they could counteract the problems that
they had, but really they weren't made that way in the first place so it was a
mistake, and as far as I'm concerned that's what ended the celica reign, they
made them for a long time, but then they stopped making them, people have a bad
taste if the engine blows up in the car especially when you're talking about a
Toyota that are known for reliability they last forever and don't break down,
when the engines were blowing up, now in the past few years Toyota has come up with
another sports car, they call it the Toyota 86, but really it's not even a
Toyota, it's made by Subaru in the same plant that Subaru makes their cars in, it's
just a rebadged Subaru, so you can't even call it a Toyota really, even though they
do, and this year they just came out with the new Supra, well the new Supra is even
stranger, it's pretty much a BMW roadster I mean they've got the BMW engines, the
BMW transmissions, again Toyota is not really a sports car company, so now I
guess they're deciding, well we'll just use other people's sports cars and then
call them Toyota's and sell them to people, I mean if I was Toyota I'd be
happy selling millions of cars to people all around the world, who are happy with
the way they run and what they do, and not even get involved in the sports car
companies, kind of a stupid thing it's not even your car it's a BMW, now maybe it'll
be a good car, I don't know they just came out with them, but it's not really a
Toyota, they make great strong designs over the years that lasted forever with
little maintenance, why on earth would they want to be using other
manufacturers stuff in cars that they're calling Toyota, it's sort of like my own
business, I worked by myself fixing my customers cars, hey I know a lot of
bad mechanics that they say they can fix anything,
the customers come in and they drop the car off, then they drive the car across
town to their friend's place where they have the engine rebuilt, they pay him a
couple grand then they charged the customer four or five thousand dollars,
you know it's not the right thing to do so if you're listening Toyota, give up on
a sports car nonsense and go back to building reliable comfortable cars for
everybody in the world to drive, so they don't have to worry about oh my car's
not gonna start, you know it's gonna start and it's gonna last for decades,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new
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