Our daughter and son-in-law had one, basically a Matrix. Great little car, same 1.8 litre engine as Corolla and 3rd Gen Prius IIRC, albeit with different tuning and a starter. Flip down the back seats and it’s a perfectly flat-floor mini cargo hauler, durable/utiltarian hard plastic. And if I’m not mistaken: climate controls you can adjust while driving, without driving off the road.
For some reason, this app did not seem to let me post text only the picture after the title. My friend has had a car lot of sorts over time- making good finds of mostly General Motors stuff, Buicks, Caddies, etc. His dad enjoyed Lincoln’s and they would buy stuff they liked and slowly sell what they didn’t need. He had many kids, as do I, and he helped me find good used cars. But when it came to find one for his last child out of the house- he thought he would try this Vibe. It’s 2009, has 175k miles on it and the price seems too good to be true last week, he paid about $2000 tax and all out the door from a small dealer and while he’s usually pretty good about kicking the tires and finding a good deal… A lot of the issues with this just appeared on the long drive home. It needs a head gasket and he’s pretty upset, cause it’s his first Toyota. I feel like I prompted him to get these over the years, I’ve got four Toyotas in my driveway, and I had a vibe as a company car back in the day and I loved it! Anybody in middle Tennessee or close by want to make him an offer on this. Interior is good, miles are low, it just needs a head gasket. PM me if so. Maybe some faded paint. He owns his own business, is busy, and can’t hide this from his daughter to spend the time to work on it.
A close friend had one. He wound up having to replace the engine after an accident but he put over 400k miles on it before he got rid of it to get an Avalon for his new wife. Pretty good car.
Some Vibes came with a Pontiac/GM engine. Terrible performance and MPG. When word got out dealers found those models difficult to sell. By the end of production all had Toyota engines.
$2k for a car that "only" needs a head gasket actually sounds about right to me, given the recent supply/demand mismatch in used cars. Did you purchase any of them in as used-up shape as that Vibe? If not, your friend didn't buy what you've been buying. Every used car is a risk, and a 15 year old car with 175k miles and an unusually low price on it is not a small risk.
Is it certain to be a head gasket, since it made a long drive home? There may be a shop that can fix it fairly cheap since it is a four cylinder, not a transverse v6 or something. Your happiness with Toyota wasn’t wrong in your experience. Or many others as they are usually sought on used car lots.
