Corolla misses first place in harsh reliability test, simply

[Chris Peterson]

Hello everyone..

I'm Christos and I'm from Greece. I recently bought a T - sport Corolla.

I'd like my first contribution to this warm and friendly 'society' to be an anecdote, a perhaps interesting incident that happened during a reliability test which was conducted by perhaps the most well known car magazine in my country.

There were numerous cars which took part, like the Golf, Xsara, Leon etc, along with a 1600cc silver Corolla. They would go round a track for endless hours to see which hatchback would break down first.

So I read in the magazine something about the Corolla being the car with the legacy which should dictate an unbreakable behavior.. thoughts the reporters had before they started driving the cars.

For every car there was a team of mechanics who were on stand by to fix anything that would come up during the test, since it was mandatory that every car finish the task.

Well, to cut a long story short, the Golf suffered 3 major mechanical problems during the test, some other cars though did very well, like the Xsara for example, which was kind of a surprise.

But the Corolla was not among the 'winners'. She suffered from 'a sudden heaviness' of the steering wheel, during the 200th or something round. The car was stopped, the Toyota guys kind of panicked, and miraculously the problem just evaporated after sometime, and the Corolla dashed into the track again.

'The corolla did not live up to our expectations' the repoter mentioned, and since I am a psychology student I think I am allowed a qualitative (that's kind of like 'subjective') overview of what was said. The problems the VW faced were attributed to a heavy past, and these were serious problems like leakage and gear jamming. But for a 'mysterious' incident like what happened to the corolla's power steering, it's a matter of 'not living up to their expectations'.

Unfortunately, not even the Toyota representatives could stand up for their car. If they had read the owners manual, they would have seen that the power steering has been designed to get heavy if overheated, and will refunction after a while of milder handling.

You'll probably ask why I didn't write to the magazine.. Well, I just didn't..

Thanks for reading!

Chris Peterson

[mytbyte]

There is a currently running 60000 mile hard test of 1.6 Corolla performed by my local car-mag (Croatia) and they already had one significant problem with it...a ring that attaches the exhaust to the engine got loose and the engine went into "safe" mode, not being allowed to revolve more than 2000 rpm...it reached a Toyota garage and it was fixed...but soon afterwards both lambdas failed, probably as a consequence of the previous problem, because the computer miscalculated the air-fuel mixture and destroyed the lambdas...the guy who was testing the car said it was partly his fault, but I couldn't decipher whether he was responsible for making the ring come loose or for ever trying to reach the garage with the engine in "safe mode"! But, thank god for such "preventive" behaviour like the one with the power steering in your mag - it just means that current Corollas should run for decades to come!:D

[Chris Peterson]

That's interesting! What does the lambda sensor do exactly? I've been hearing about it but never actually bothered to find out. 'Safe mode'!? wow.. it sounds like we can run the Xp windows on our cars!

Thank you!

[mytbyte]

As I understand it, but I may be somewhat wrong, is that it checks the exhaust fumes for compliance with ecological standards and adjusts the air-fuel mixture, but I am not 100% positive on this...maybe someone else could help more...

the power steering problem is well noted in the Corolla manual as a feature to prevent damage to the steering power electro-motor...

[Ian_Celica]

Your right, they do measure the emissions and then adjust the engine based on that.

They do go, TVR and Vectras IMHO

Toyota don't make them, so how can they be reliable :-)

Ian

[mytbyte]

Yes, many different europeans parts manufacturers are recently involved in Corolla production...that's a bad thing becuase I can see some of the legendary reliability get swept away by contracted european suppliers...and I haven't yet seen how producing Toyotas in Europe had lowered the cost...still, Yaris is even now the most reliable car in Europe and with best crash test results in the class...hope it stays that way... :D

[Gally]

On the lambada question. Yes the do measure emissions etc. They are normally situated just behind the cat. converter. Its main function is when a car is cold, this is the most uneconomical time for ur car. Its makes the engine run economically when ur car is cold. Most lambadas have a heater built in to them now. They r very delicate pieces of equipment any dirt oil grease get at it, they chip will blow. And its a common thing to go especially in VW's for some reason. If it does go (indication by yellow warning light - emission light- dont get it confused with ur engine light) get it replaced as soon as u can as u can do untold damge to ur engine and u may blow ur cat. converter, cos ur car is burning now too much juice even if ur dealer tells u otherwise! Just dont drive ur car hard.

ALso known as an oxygen sensor.

Later