Quote Originally Posted by brett0004 View Post
Here at work (Large mining company W.A.) we have hundreds of Rangers that they introduced into our fleet over the last 7 or so years to meet the 5 star ANCAP rating when the hilux didnt meet, they are now desperatly trying to get rid of them all because the maintenance is huge. there must 20 of them just parked up down at light vehicles on this site alone. I know the light vehicle supervisor and he just smiles when someone says they are looking at a ranger. Mind you I think in civilian life they are ok but on the mine they cop a flogging where the Toyota's seem to take it. Problem is now the wait times on new vehicles is causing issues.
That surprises me Brett. I sold my workshop almost ten years ago so don't get to work on or see what cars and trucks are causing owners grief, only what I hear these days. A mate up until 18 months ago was working at Weipa in the mines. He mentioned at the time they decided to move away from the Hilux and Colorado due to so many problems and was really turned off by the Hilux's. He was in the workshop and said they had run out of engines and Toyota couldn't supply any to get 16 Hilux's back into service (all less than twelve months old). He also mentioned Toyota didn't support the customers like they did in the past. They also moved away from the Landcruises and bought Rangers and a few Isuzu on trial. He said the same, they all got driven hard like rental cars at a bucks party. The Rangers weren't perfect but better backup support and fewer problems. Dave also told me they were trialing new Rangers that were driverless. They mainly carted parts around from the store to site jobs to mechanics. He said it was so weird seeing a Ranger turning up to a machine with no driver. He was very impressed the the repair requests had been reduced by 90% and any problems mainly related to overloading. Must be some real space cadets driving the company utes up there.

My Toyota experiences.

I had Hilux's since 1984, thirteen of them in total till 2016. Had a fantastic run, Bullitt proof utes until 2001. Then I started to have a few problem which mainly involved me fixing them myself. The local dealer didn't like doing warranty work or didn't know how to fix them. I got onto Toyota customer service and they just say talk to your local dealer. Wrote a few letters and still not much happened. They eventually sent out a so called state Toyota mechanical adviser to sort out the many issues the ute had. He fronted to my workshop fully equipped with a pre response bull shit printed list to read out to the customer and fancy Toyota folder. He knew how the system worked and said his hands were tied, felt sorry and knew the problems were wide spread and Toyota were trying to play them down and away from the media eyes.

The last new Hilux I purchased a SR5 manual duel cab 4x4 $56,000, picked it up from the dealership 5 minutes away at 3.30pm and straight to my workshop. Locked the workshop up at 4.30 pm to go home and take the family for a drive in the new car. Wouldn't start, rang the dealership (Windsor Toyota) told them my problem. Workshop manager said they couldn't do anything for three weeks because they were busy. My company did outsource work for this and other local dealerships. I got onto the dealer principal but he way only interested in going home because it was now 5.00 pm on a Friday afternoon. At this stage I was still calm. I asked for him to return the Hilux I had just traded in but he said they had already loaned it to one of the workshop staff and they didn't have any loan cars available. Then I got aggravated, I mentioned we had a tilt tray in the workshop and I was going return the new Hilux and dump it across there driveway blocking it. This didn't go down to well and they thought I was getting a bit hard to get along with. I ended up finding and fixing the fault which took me two hours. I had 6 major faults and 7 minor during my inspection on a car that was now only five hours old, and a grand total of 18km. I had only clocked up 4.5 of the 18km. Drove it around for the weekend then parked it across their entry driveway at 6.00 am Monday morning locked and I had the keys. Got six messages on my phone by 7.15am. The next six months was a long story but again eventually ended up fixing most of the problem myself and at my expense. Last Toyota I owned.