Greetings to all Toyota (Corolla) owners

August 10, 2018

Just to say hi to all Toyota owners.

I bought a UK Corolla 2005 (E120 VVTi I think) 1.6 automatic gear petrol 5 doors several years ago (2008 if I can recall) in a hurry so did not have time to mess with/upgrade it. Now thinking of some minor upgrades ... will post on Corolla club for advice later.

Coming from the far east we all love Toyota and as it has a good reputation of being a workhorse. For medium size car the Corolla 4AGE engine was highly priced (still is) in those days (80s) especially amongst the boy racers friends of mine (I think the engine is very similar to Ford Costworth ...).

My current Corolla car has been brilliant, especially the engine, apart from needing to change normal consumable such as disk brakes, brake pads, ABS sensors (this is very expensive £125 per ABS sensor), a new Battery and sticky handbrake/parking brake (at one point the handbrake could not disengage and I could smell burning hot disk smell until I got it fixed ... 😀).

The car is now 13 year old (low mileage) and the engine is still running very smooth, although the roof has some dents due to vandalism (a guy just hit the roof for no reason while quarrelling with his friends so took it out on my parked car) but mostly just superficial cosmetic wear.

The car passed MOT every time and I tried to maintain and look after it as much as I can (without all my boy racer friends help). I was thinking of upgrading it to the newer Auris but gave up the idea for now as I really enjoy this old fashion automatic gear box and it is a 1.6 litre engine.

Just yesterday I had my Airbag recall fixed at the Toyota main dealer. At the dealer I saw some new Auris but very disappointed to see the engine size being 1.2 litre only albeit with turbo. For such medium size car I thought it would put a lot of stress on the engine (not an engineer by the way). I know about the environmental issues but is this false economy/assumption etc?

Anyway, I will continue to buy Toyota as long as they are reliable ...

August 10, 2018

Hi Chew

Welcome to the club! Despite that I'm a Celica owner, I would love to see some pics of your car.
Small turbo engines are increasingly becoming the norm, although you shouldn't be put off by all of them. There are various small turbo engines making impressive power.

A few examples just to name a few:

Audi gets 150HP to 180HP out of a 1.4L.
Mercedez gets 360HP out of a 2L!
Fiat gets 160HP out of a 1.4

Certain manufacturers are investing in what they are calling EDE (Extremely downsized engine) promoting the benefits of smaller engine = less weight = greater fuel efficiency. Allegedly, Fiat has a 0.7L, 3 cylinder engine that produces 138HP in the making. When you compare that to their existing 1.4 that produces 160HP it's really quite remarkable.