Toyota Just Stopped Making the Best Vehicles Ever Made and I'm Mad as Hell

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 is 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 salt third and gym got together and they started new me 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 working the factory but work under the 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 to sell it because they had a lot of problems with them blowing up guys are rubbing them too high they didn't have the right amount of baffling plates on the oil pump so if you 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 new me Factory in Fremont they made Toyota Corollas too they made a lot of vehicles there realize new me and frame mat produced almost 8 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 dollars for the vehicle he did have to get framework done because started out in Norway Maine and ended up in Massachusetts salt water checks it's tall so he had problem with the control arms going so we had to control arms replace 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 alloy wheels you can see they're pitted but they work they hold air 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 are really nice alley 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 rust and crowded away you really don't want to buy it in this case subframe is okay control arms the blind bolt 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 they are perfectly fine because almost all the parts on Corolla type vehicles are totally interchangeable this is Wayne 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 aside from the Pontiac badge different plastic and some different body parts on the car you don't see this on The Matrix says that's all Pontiac stuff it's basically a Toyota as you can tell by just looking to the dash here's the vibe see the instrument panel I hear 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 shorten 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 in the new United Motor Manufacturing 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 the 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 off 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 clapping on these engines that's probably normal but in this case it's more the fuel injectors clacking just from all day 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 sometimes you got to fix the exhaust first because if the exhaust is 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 it's setting itself up and we're doing 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 up and look at the live data and a lot of that you can see it looks like my wife's Matrix everything's pretty much the same even events 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 back seats let's look at the live data oh everything's got good colors in there but as you can see here but that is a little squirrely these short-term fuel trim it's 80 19 but the long term it's subtracting 25 now truthfully that makes no sense at all so 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 mop because with a leak like that it's gone off fact what happens with the oxygen sensors and they're obviously squirrely 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 jump is zero and the long-term fuel trim is subtracting 25 fuel so now after we restarted it from installing out 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 19th and it was Zero when we restarted the car I really as you can see it's idling really smooth let's check the AC said he'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 talking just about guarantee if you filled it up the refrigerator would start working get all cars loose some refrigerant I had to put refrigerant and 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 roll 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 GMS before in Fairmont they stopped selling the United States for 2021 and we'll get into why but first we'll get into a little history of these things now if you look at this thing you wouldn't even recognize the original 1951 because it turns out that 1941 a Japanese Army captured a Willie's Jeep they took it back to Japan and they reverse engineered in other words they copied it take a look at it I mean they look like Jeeps they were jeeps and the early bigger Land Cruisers they had a six cylinder engine in them that had pretty much interchangeable parts from a Chevrolet straight 6 engine that they copied it from they make them better and better and better as time goes on so you might say oh Scotty then why don't they sell them anymore in the United States well they still sell them in the rest of the world but it's a big V8 engine and it gets low gas mileage you can get anywhere between 14.8 and 15.8 miles a gallon the penis is the highway or city and you might think well that's horrible what's a big all-wheel drive vehicle it weighs a lot it's huge it's got this big powerful V8 engine now you might think that's bad but I had a customer in Houston and he had an old one and it had the big old straight six-cylinder Engine with giant coffee sized Pistons inside it a carburetor and a three-speed standard he got single digits sometimes he did six sometimes he might get eight miles a gallon those were tremendous gas Hawks when you consider the weight of the thing and the speed that it has that's the best gas Mod's going to get but stop selling the United States 2021 was the last ones I ever saw because it lowers the cafe gas mileage rating so the Americans penalized companies that have gas hog cars and Toyota didn't want to make their whole Fleet get lower gas modulating so they don't sell them in the United States like I said they're selling lots of other places people are nuts about these vehicles if you're thinking about buying one in the United States my advice is do it fast because if you don't the price is going to go even Sky higher this thing's gone 160 000 miles and he paid 28 grand drive up these things have high resale values as far as you can see low gas mileage this is 16.3 combined City highway so y'all the trips we will have taken you got all your tire pressure you can have the gas mileage while you're driving if you want it's not running now so it's not going to say anything since it refueled last time it's getting 16.3 miles per gallon just realize you get one of these things it's cavernous inside there is a lot of space in these things it's a gigantic armrest the thing is huge now this is a 2009 so it's old school but if you want a big stable vehicle that's safe for your family you can't beat one of these things even though it's older it's still got electronic control transmission you can play with all kinds of things hill climbing you name it being a Toyota you know it's going to be reliable it's going to start up every time and even though it's old it's still got a backup camera on it and as I said cavernous room you can see the dog's been resting here there's a bunch of dog hair there's all kinds of space back here look at that real seats they have a reasonable amount of room in them fold them up you got a lot of space and of course you got many different ways to open it you can move it apart where you can open it the whole way it is a well-designed vehicle and when you combine the size and weight and the fact that it's all-wheel drive this thing is not going to get stuck in the snow you're going to be able to go anywhere now it's certainly gone a long way from the original copy of the Willy's Jeep it's still got a lot of roughness of the military vehicle but it's got Creature Comforts well beyond anything that Willie would have dreamed up when he made the general purpose vehicle for the Army and when a Japanese started a copy because they thought their army needed one of those too and of course being a later model one we're not dealing with any of this timing belt crap it's all timing chain it's all metal you don't have to think about it you just do normal maintenance and it's certainly solid built listen to the hood that's a hood that's not a piece of tin rattling and has he had any problems with it no it starts right up the original owner took it to the dealer all the time had all the maintenance done well even if you don't do that mainly you just need to change the oil and filter every 5 000 miles or you saw it'll probably run just the same you want to talk about a smooth idle there's no shaking in this baby in gear now normally you got to worry about the bump at the end of my driveway but this thing's so high up in the air we're not even going to slow down for it I mean it flies over that with no problem at all you are high up in the air you feel safe and secure you can just feel the half of this vehicle as you drive it down the road and yeah the gas mileage stinks but there's nothing you can do about that with a vehicle this big and it's heavy with that big V8 engine and the all-wheel drive in the ring we step on the gas this baby Picks Them Up and puts them down without any kind of drifting or slipping this thing was basically a modified Willy's Jeep on steroids so unlike the Willy's Jeep that can only go you know 45 50 miles an hour rattle like man this thing does it with Creature Comforts and you go ahead of a lot faster than that and look I've been driving so the gas mileage is already starting to drop now when I was younger the Chevy Suburban was a thing for people to have for carrying families going around believe me this thing blows them away these things can regularly go five six hundred thousand miles or more you will never get that out of a modern Suburban but these unfortunately they're not selling the United States anymore because the gas Mod's ratings to loan Toyota does not want to lower their Cafe ratings in the United States and yeah if you're a purist you're just mad about an automatic transmission but they're very dependable and really in the United States it's been a long time since they sold a standard transmission they just didn't they know Americans won automatics it's very dependable I've never yet to see one break the all-wheel drive system by Toyota has been pretty much perfected it's an excellent system it's just you got to live with low gas mileage as usual in luxury Toyotas the quality is high leather seats cars getting all their leather seats are still in the immaculate shape you can see as I drive it the gas mileage drops it's now under 16 into the 15. even though it's old hey the GPS system from Toyota still works pretty good we're right by the ocean there you can see the blue kind of basic because it's an old system but it works fine for a vehicle this size it's got very responsive steering and with all this weight excellent brakes ABS system works fine still it's a Toyota they don't break down much let me tell you I feel safe in this thing you know you're not worried about somebody hitting you know what's going to happen to me no you have to worry about what's going to happen to the people if you win anybody and yes isn't all my favorite Vehicles there it is made in Japan now the owner had one question he thinks oh the brakes are kind of soft well they're not really soft that's how they're designed for this he had an FJ Cruiser before this and he got rid of that because having kids he said the suicide doors really got in the way so he made money on it so it didn't really matter better but kind of strange that it came from a Willy's Jeep to evolve into this luxury vehicle right they're not made for cornering at 100 miles an hour you could do it if you had to if somebody's chasing it I guess but they're made for Comfort safety the one thing that a lot of people are always asking me about is hey how many miles are too many miles on a used vehicle well this has got a lot of miles it doesn't mean squat I've seen these things with four or five hundred thousand miles on them so even though he had to pay 28 grand if he went out and sold it today he'd probably get 34 or 35 because since they're not selling the United States anymore just because of the bad gas mileage ratings there's plenty of people that don't care that much about gas mileage ratings especially older people that want safety or people with a family want safety that perhaps don't even drive all that much they don't care what the gas mileage is so somebody like this that's an immaterial thing when they buy it but the shape that this thing is in if you would have blindfolded me I couldn't called you what year the vehicle was if I was riding in it it worked perfectly fine they are over built machines and there's nothing wrong with getting one with this kind of mods especially where he bought it it was from the original owner it had one owner and they took it to the dealer all the time to get it maintained some cars like Jags Mercedes BMWs Audis you really got to make sure it was maintained correctly but this is a Toyota product heck you could buy one new probably just change the oil the first hundred thousand miles and nothing would probably go wrong anyways but it's a good idea to get some kind of Records out of the car was taken care of because you do need to know that the oil was changed if you remember the Lexus that I did a few months ago in Tennessee the guy unfortunately bought one for about nine grand from a Toyota used car lot and the engine was all worn out because they never changed the oil the previous owners and when I pulled those spark plugs off so how covered they were with burnt carbon I said get rid of this thing change the oil just get rid of it soon because the engine engines eventually going to wear out you don't have to worry about the V8 engines even though they get bad gas mileage they have a long lifespan much better than their new idea that they're putting in the Tundras of V6 turbos which they're already having problems with this is a tried and true dungeon that can basically run forever but if you want to get one of these to eat my warning you better do it fast because since they're not selling anymore the prices are going to go up look what happened to their Cruisers they stopped making them I've seen people pay more money for used ones and they want brand new so if you want to get one of these you better look around fast and find it before the prices get even higher I doubt if they'll ever bring them back in the United States but you have to worry about Parts they're still making them selling over the rest of the world you don't care about gas mods you want a big giant family car to take you around and really hardly anybody takes them off-road they don't need standards anymore an all-wheel drive you'll never get stuck yeah you're gonna pay for the gas mileage and you're gonna pay for the vehicle if you get a good one because they're not giving them away but consider what new cars the average new car in the United States these days geez it's like 25 Grand more than he paid for this so this is probably Outlast most of the new ones this particular one was made in Indiana that's where they started making them the early ones look quite a bit like a forerunner four runners Are All Made in Japan these are all made in Indiana and this is of course a V8 with four-wheel drive now as we look inside here we go we got mechanical low and high and neutral you shift it by hand No Electronic crap on this now strangely enough the man hardly ever uses the four-wheel drive because the roads here as bumpy as they are they're not made of dirt and they're always cleared so and it doesn't really snow all that much in Rhode Island either I mean it's great in the snow but it doesn't snow much all under the hood design Force Base can last forever they've only got one downside because it's an old vehicle and as you can see it's got a rubber timing belt in it they work perfectly fine but of course they're rubber eventually they'll break they tell you to change them every hundred thousand miles so since it's an interference engine if the belt breaks the Pistons will hit the valves and ruin the engine so you're supposed to change it every hundred thousand miles and if your Riverboat Gambler like some of my customers I think customers or these things with over 200 000 miles and they never change the belt and they were still running down the road they are that well built but if you're looking to buy one of these in a worrywart the one that's got the timing chain then you'll never have to think about it but like you say these belts last an awful long time this video class one gigantic problem it's a gigantic vehicle this one gets about 13 miles a gallon in town on a good day they eat up gas almost every customer that I've had with one of these I'll say what kind of gas mileage you get and they said I'm afraid to find out we fill it up all the time I don't want to know how low it hits that's just how these are they're four-wheel drive they're giant heavy vehicles with the big V8 engine they got decent acceleration but they get the world's worst gas mileage now that Toyota's not selling the Land Cruiser in the United States anymore this is their biggest vehicle it's actually a very similar vehicle anyway and even go back in the early days one year they sold like 68 000 of them last year in the United States they only sell like maybe 8 000 of them they're big heavy vehicles that get lousy gas mileage they're going to be fading away as time goes on now this guy he doesn't really care because Rhode Island isn't that big and he's a mobile DJ so he doesn't have to go all that far and man you can put a lot of crap in these things now you'll see these little latches the plastic under there they break all the time you used to stick a screwdriver in there but now he just opens it from the side to load it and stuff he can fix it if he wanted but he doesn't really care he can get all his gear in get all his gear out not get stuck anywhere with the four-wheel drive and of course this all kinds of room inside the leather's a little bit worn but hey you got these seats then if you want you can have seats back there but you can see he's pretty much plywood in because he's carrying all his DJ equipment in it he's even gotten rid of the top here so he can put more stuff in now we'll look inside and yeah this is what happens you get nice seat covers cover them up the love is going to rip Toyota leather isn't the greatest and we'll check inside how many miles does the baby have it's got 222 450 miles on it and does it burn oil no it doesn't burn the oil it's a Toyota these things are well made it shifts perfectly fine it runs fine it just gets crappy gas mileage on ABS brakes that work and look a transmission with an actual dipstick so you can change it and check it yourself unlike that modern crap as the original power steering pump the original air conditioning compressor and it's a Toyota the AC still freezing cold if you go way under there it doesn't have the original alternator there's a story behind that it wasn't charging still took it in the guy replaced the alternator didn't fix the problem it turned out it was a wiring feeding off so it's got a new alternator on it it's only the first one they changed but the old one probably was still working fine because when they put a new one on it still didn't charge so it probably didn't even need that that's how well made these are you know I'm always saying oh buy a Japanese vehicle made in Japan well these were made in Indiana and since 2022 they're racking them in San Antonio along with all the Tundras they moved all the Tacoma production to Mexico they're excellent Vehicles still yes they're gas Hogs they haven't changed all that much they still use a lot of gasoline but they can run forever and what's more important to you let's face it you're gonna drive a big heavy four-wheel drive vehicle it doesn't matter what they do to the technology it's going to use a lot of gas if you're using it for business it's a business expense you're writing it off anyways like he is it'll get you where you're going it'll always start do you really care if you get one that oh this other big one doesn't get 13 it gets 20. it's really not all that different and of course if you take it on the highway and you drive like an absolute Turtle you might get 16 or push 17 if you're going downhill with a wind behind you but enough of me talking let's see what the machine says oh here we go all right we'll do an automatic scan now as we look here you can see the engine and that transmission and everything totally normal the only problem is there's some failures with the ABS system we'll look at it but who really cares you don't expect ABS to work all that well on the vehicle that's this old look at the right rear speed sensor malfunction control system and the steering angle sensor which is in here I would never count on ABS on a vehicle this old anyways he said no problem stopping especially when you got a four-wheel drive system you can just put it in high or low it's not going to be skidding around these things are so heavy they're like 18 wheeler trucks you reason these 18 wheeler trucks you see them going fast in the rain they don't care they weigh so much they don't hydroplane well you keep good tires on it we will go back to the engine and we'll look at live data start it up we'll start checking out the data nothing's odd colored yet the short-term fuel trim it's only subtracting 0.04 percent on number one and 0.04 a number two that means that it's working at 99.96 percent of perfect you can't get much closer to that on a vehicle that's this old with 200 something Thousand Miles these things are made to last but just realize it's still a gas hog it doesn't matter that it's working at 99.96 efficiency it's still going to use a lot of gas because it's big and heavy and has a giant V8 engine check everything else here see if there's any odd data look at all that even on this old car and here we go misfiring of the engine okay we're walking the ball one through eight what do we see nothing but zeros it does not have a misfiring engine we know that just listen to how quiet that engine is rub it up get out here you don't hear weird noises now you're plenty high up in the air here so in this case you really don't have to worry about the giant bump that keeps water from going to my neighbor's yard it'll just fly over that and you'll bounce around like a Porky Pig cartoon then but hey it goes and we're coming to the horrible bumpy Rhode Island roads you see one thing that it doesn't bother you yeah it's old shocks are worn but it's still a smooth ride on the bump because it weighs so much and it's got a big wheelbase it's still really comfortable now you're gonna hear a lot of noise in this because he took the insulation out and he's got a bunch of DJ crap and he took the third row seats out so Dad you're gonna see that's not the cars problem he doesn't care about the noise so you wouldn't either if you were driving it around the big V8 Andrew when you're pulling into traffic it's got no problem at all taken off Jesus the cops are coming after us you can see it's perfectly smooth for cruising around and there's absolutely nothing that needs to be done to this vehicle except for the handle on the back and he doesn't care he used to use a screwdriver and I just use the back door so you can fix it if you want you can always get parts of these things I mean it's no problem at all back this up it doesn't shake at all at all 220 000 miles listen to that engine you can just tear that V8 engine home no what do I think they're still making these things oh they're not making them in Indiana now they're making in San Antonio with the Tundras As the Bell Tolls they're still solid Vehicles modern ones of course have more electronic stuff nothing like a Simplicity that this machine is they'll still last but I thought if they'll last as long as these old ones just realize one thing if you're buying one of these you're better off getting a timing chain one if you don't maintain right so because the belt breaks check the frame to make sure it's not rusted they will Rust if you get in a bad area yeah they can rust out and realize older is actually better these engines are so well made you can get rebuilt ones that are perfect you can get them for a low enough price you could put another engine in if the goes out but they rarely go out I've never seen the transmission go out one of these so I mean that's how rare it is but you can get anything on it fixed as long as the frame is still like this look superficial rust spot sounds like new steel and this is Rhode Island they use a lot of salt here in the winter these things are solid built this is an American vehicle you go like this on the running boards they crumble and they fall off these are still solid as can be you don't mind about gas prices 13 miles a gallon yes that's what they actually get they'll be happy with one of these if you don't drive that much who cares they'll get you where you're going it won't break and considering you're going to buy a new car what's the average car going for now you know 40 something thousand dollars you might awful lot of gasoline for that I would get one of these and just keep fixing it forever if I had one just realize they're not that easy to find because they don't sell that many yeah this one was like 60 000 this year they sold but last year they only sold like 8 000 of them in the United States they don't sell that many they don't make that many they're not all that easy to find so if you really want one and you find one don't quibble over chicken chump if they want three or four or five grand more than you want to pay hey just pay it if a guy like me says it's in good shape so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell [Music]

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 284,657

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, toyota, here's why, here's why toyota, car company, toyota reliability, most reliable car, most reliable cars, here's why I only buy toyotas, buying a toyota, should I buy a toyota, buying a used toyota, toyota review, toyota car review, new toyota, car advice, toyota cars, are toyotas reliable, should i buy a toyota, new toyota reliability, best car, best cars

Id: E5hIY0Ujmno

Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 23 2023