Stop Buying Toyotas, Buy This Pontiac Made By Toyota Instead for Only $800

rev up your engines today we're going to talk about a relatively unknown car the pontiac vibe why they made them why they don't make them anymore with one that's got 230 000 miles out this is the vibe gt this is my wife's toyota matrix basically they're the same car with one exception the matrixes were built in cambridge ontario by canadians where the vibes were built in fremont california by american union labor which was the only factory that toyota ever had that had union labor now why are they called pontiac vibes because it was a 50-50 deal between toyota and gm they were building cars in the united states toyota saw the handwriting on the wall they were probably going to have any kind of import tax on japanese cars so they made these in fremont california now before that it was a gm factory people were drunk on the assembly line they had horrendous quality so toyota and gm got together and they started nume yes it's a real thing it stands for new united motor manufacturing incorporated it doesn't exist anymore but it did exist in the past and toyota allowed these union workers to stay work in the factory but work under the toyota brand of how to build cars where they care more about quality they build them correctly and as such these are still excellent cars because why there's a toyota celica engine because this is a vibe gt this has a yamaha designed four-cylinder engine that puts out quite a bit of horsepower now the celica's had a lot of problems with them blowing up guys were revving them too high they didn't have the right amount of baffling plates on the oil pump so if you're cornered like a maniac oil would go to one side the oil pump would suck air and the engines would blow up every single customer i've had with the toyota celica gt that had one of these yamaha design engines blew up the original engine and ended up putting other engine one guy went through three separate engines he liked driving them fast but does this look like a race car no it's a toyota matrix built on a toyota corolla chassis in the nume factory in fremont they made toyota corollas too they made a lot of vehicles there realize nume in fremont produced almost eight million of these pontiac vibes and toyota corollas they're excellent vehicles and of course you can get them dirt cheap this has got 230 he bought it with 180 and he paid a whopping 800 for the vehicle he did have to get framework done because started out in norway maine and ended up in massachusetts salt water taxes tall so he had problem with the control arms going so we had the control arms replaced but you can see other than superficial the frame itself is still pretty solid now it's nothing like my wife's matrix that thing is totally solid but then again it came from texas arizona and now it lives in tennessee most of the time so it doesn't have any rust on it at all and being a gt this has the original la wheels you can see they're pitted but they work they hold there you could repaint them if you wanted and after all the wheels on my wife's matrix those are aftermarket ones that came with the car the guy in arizona originally owned to put those on and they're really nice la wheels they've held up really well you got to consider that these are 15 years old now and they're still in excellent shape even though they're dirty i need to clean them so if you are looking at a northern version of one of these pontiacs look for rust and corrosion if it's all rusted and crowded away you really don't want to buy it in this case subframe is okay control arms the blind bolts got screwed up so he just had those all replaced and the thing is this is just toyota corollas in disguise you can get parts everywhere you can get parts from overseas dirt cheap that are perfectly fine because almost all the parts on corolla type vehicles are totally interchangeable this is made in california yeah they're still well made check it out still got the original alternator now he doesn't know if the ac works we'll have to try it later because he's never even tried it he doesn't care right from the pontiac badge different plastic and some different body parts on the car you don't see this on the matrixes that's all pontiac stuff it's basically a toyota as you can tell by just looking at the dash here's the vibe see the instrument panel and here's my wife's matrix see the same instrument panel so it's dependable gets good gas mileage they can run basically forever it's just a toyota corolla in disguise originally the toyota matrixes were called toyota corolla matrix and they just shortened it to toyota matrix knowing how lazy americans are i'm surprised they didn't just shorten it to toyota ma or toyota m who knows now when gm went bankrupt and there was a big recession they stopped their participation in the new me and the new united motor manufacturer incorporated so they shut the whole thing down but interestingly enough now the factory is where they build teslas in california so they went from horrible quality gm cars 80s and 90s to pretty well-built japanese cars but when a deal fell apart now they're making poorly built teslas what comes around goes around what do they say you know the circle of life well the circle's back at square one making poor quality vehicles in the fremont california plant rather ironic there this has a cold air intake modification which i'm not a big fan of and one of it broke so he's got a tin can inside there taped up so it doesn't suck air but it runs good so and as you can hear got an exhaust leak turns out that the gasket between the exhaust pipe and the front of the muffler has disintegrated so it just needs one part it's not that big of a deal he's having a hard time finding it but you can find them online and if you wanted who really cares you could just weld it together if you wanted i mean it's just an exhaust system now you're always going to hear a little clacking on these engines that's totally normal but in this case it's more the fuel injectors clacking just from old age but it still gets almost 30 miles a gallon on the highway so it's nothing particularly wrong now he knows it's running a little bit rich put my scan tool on but tell you got to fix the exhaust first because if the exhaust has that big leak that's going to affect the readings of the oxygen sensors and that can make it all go squirrely so we'll hook up our computer here so he plugged it in set itself up and we'll do an all module scan and we'll see the only thing that has problems is the power chain control module so let's see what that says says that the fuel system is running lean we don't care about the evap we'll start it up and look at the live data in the live data you can see it looks a lot like my weights matrix everything's pretty much same even the vents except this is a six-speed standard transmission so you can zoom around a lot faster got the same handbrake same chairs same console same backseat let's look at the live data fire everything's got good colors on it but as you can see here that is a little squarely the short term fuel trim it's adding 19 but the long term it's subtracting 25 now truthfully that makes no sense at all it's all like i said he's got to fix that exhaust leak put a new exhaust donut on the pipe going to the front of the muffler because with a leak like that it's going to affect what happens with the oxygen sensors and they're obviously squarely because there's no engine that's going to be adding a bunch of fuel short term but subtracting a bunch of fuel long term it makes no sense but when you have that going it's going to affect everything crazily enough so i would fix that first and pray that that cold air intake isn't incorrect for the vehicle personally i keep these things stock i never change them you start messing with that you start messing with all kinds of stuff it runs good enough it's like it runs horrible it is running you can see now it's stalled out just sitting there because we idled for a long time it's obviously squirreling around with the fuel mixture as you can see now the short-term fuel trump is zero and the long-term fuel trim is subtracting 25 fuel so now after we restarted it from its stalling up the fuel trim is perfect it's zero so you got to fix the exhaust leak before you do anything see look at that the short-term fuel trim just went to its 80-19 and it was zero when we restarted the car but really as you can see it's idling really smooth let's check the ac seti's never tried it well i like trying things he's never put any refrigerant in it and lo and behold the compressor's not turning so i can just about guarantee if you filled it up in the fridge you would start working again all cars lose some refrigerant i had to put refrigerant in our 07 matrix for the first time ever last year i emptied it out and filled it up and then it was a lot colder so some of it leaked out so you could add that in but he doesn't care his girlfriend cares but he doesn't care windows rolled down perfectly fine aside from the different body panels it's the same car as a matrix that's made in ontario only it was made in california it was made with union labor in the united states but it was a toyota gm mixture so they did a lot better than factory where they only made gm's before in fairmont i even had a customer bought a gm from the factory when it only made gm vehicles and it made this horrible rattling noise right god grandfather's like i wonder what this is we figured it's coming from under the seat the driver's seat you know what they did they put a golf ball inside the frame and when you caught it and they go groom glue we look on a little hole and got the golf ball out and of course the owner was furious he said the swine's a gm put a golf ball well that's the kind of work that went on in that place when it was just a gm factory and now like i say it's a tesla factory so maybe the world's gone back making cars the quality is not so hot tesla has non-union labor so you can't blame it on the unions he's not using unions now doesn't make a noise because the grommet on the exhaust is falling up but look it doesn't shake at all even though got all this mileage on it these are relatively bumpy riding cars here's the big lump here it's not going to drag because it's high up in here but that's the one problem with the matrixes and the vibes of the same vehicle basically is they are relatively rough driving vehicles you hit bumps you feel them just like my ice matrix now the handling is fine they handle really well they have kind of a motorcycle style suspension in the back so these things corner really well i wish mine was a six speed i'd have a lot more fun driving it around ours has a smaller engine horsepower wise and also has an automatic transmission so let's see what this thing can do we'll get out in traffic and it's got some good zip makes a nice sound not racy racy but hey you can definitely keep up with traffic and still get good gas mileage and this one sounds like a race car because it's got a hole in the exhaust but that is making it a little bit squirrely so it needs to be fixed so the fuel trims go back to normal i spilled some fun zippy little car to drive around it especially with the six speed but i do have to say the noise would drive my wife insane she likes your quiet matrix so here we have it the toyota matrix i mean pontiac vibe that for toyota and gm got together for a short time but then said i still love vista and now teslas are made there hey if you can get one of these for 800 bucks snap it up if only for history's sake because just like the toyota corolla they're based on these things can run forever so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 277,443

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, car advice, toyota, toyota car review, toyota cars, here's why, is toyota reliable, car buying, are toyotas good, better, car vs car, pontiac, pontiac vibe, pontiac vibe review, pontiac vs toyota reliability, pontiac vs toyota, pontiac cars, here's why pontiac is better than toyota, is pontiac reliable, are pontiac vibes reliable, are pontiacs good cars, vibe vs matrix

Id: 4aEqZSLdZ-0

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022