Donkey years

There's no reason why his workhorse can't reach the million-kilometer mark, says Lou Toerien from Kempton Park about this 17-year-old Toyota Corolla.

- Lou Toerien

"Our children were at university for many years, and anyone who's been through that can tell you what an expensive story it is. But who would deny their child something great in order to buy a new (or different) vehicle every three or four years? That's why I decided to drive my car for as long as I possibly could.

I bought a new Toyota Corolla 1.6 GLE in 2005, and I haven't regretted the purchase for a second. We've used it for our daily commute to and from work, we've gone on holiday with it - towing trailers, too - and I helped my student offspring move around probably about 15 times. We love to camp and have been towing a Gypsey Caravette 6 to various inland resorts for 12 years. Plus, we did two return trips to Hartenbos.

If you were to describe the life of our Corolla in numbers, it would look like this: at 200 000 km, we replaced the radiator. It cost R900 and was possibly a factory fault, in my opinion. We replaced the front shock absorbers 10 000 km later but haven't yet had to replace the rear ones. The starter needed attention at 430 000 km - also R900 - and we replaced the clutch 30 000 km later (R3 100). At 500 000 km, two of the fuel injectors had to be replaced at R900 each. Another 10 000 km later, it was time for the left brake calliper (R1 500) to be replaced. The fourth gear kept disengaging around 640 000 km, but R6 000 took care of that.