The reason for older Japanese cars being memorably reliable are fairly simple. Most of those old Japanese cars were fairly simple; they were also carefully designed so that they could be repaired. (When Toyota started putting the V6 in trucks, it realized that the oil filter was almost inaccessible, so it put a little door inside the passenger-side wheel well that you could access the filter through.) There was great engineering too. Toyota s 22R is almost unkillable.


But if you want 17 airbags, a ride like your living room, power doo dads for everything and climate controlled cup holders then you re not going to achieve reliability through keeping it simple.


I drive a very low mile (180,600ish) 1987 Toyota Pickup
still a Hilux without the badge. It s from the time when Toyota still made warlord grade vehicles. I love, but you couldn t pay me to drive a Toyota made after 1994ish. There are now multiple generations of multiple models of Toyota trucks that the frames will rot if they so much as get near salt. (Toyota bought the Tacomas back at above KBB to keep it quiet.) I can understand bedsides rusting away, but frames shows a lack of concern for fundamental quality.


As others have said, modern Toyotas are ugly. They re not particularly fuel efficient, and less so than their ancestors. And there is no feeling when you shut the door that the car was designed and built to survive the apocalypse.


Then again, the Japanese build and sell the worst of their lineups in and for the US market. Same with the Europeans to some degree. We ve got the crappiest, ugliest, most useless cars on the planet. But we have them because that s what we want. 