buying used 2005 help

sometimes when you are used to a certain feature its hard to live with out it, I think I'd die if I lost my DVR. So can you live without tpms, rear camera, aux input?? If so go for it, no car is perfect, and if you think manufacturer's always improve their cars year to year think again, the 07+ is more likely to get condensation in the headlamp housing than the 04-06. Most people believe you never buy the first year, in the case of the gen II that would be the 04, as it takes a year or two to work our all the kinks. And towards the end of the model generation it is possible that auto manufacturers try to figure out what is over engineered and therefor what corners can be cut back a little to save money.

All this may or not be true, and it may or may not be true with toyota. But if you follow that logic than the 05 and 06 are the way to go. We've got both and 04 and 05 with nary a problem but then again we only drive them 13K miles a year. And yes there is some evidence that the car you are interested in has sat awhile, but I bought my 04 from an old lady who had put less than 1K miles in her year of ownership and the car has given me no fuss at all, it just took a week to get that car up to my mpg standards.

you can stiffen the front of the car with a strut tower brace, the car probably needs new spark plugs and PCV valve, the strut tower brace is easily added during this lengthy procedure. And you can stiffen the rear of the car with a Prius plate. this is a simple lift, remove and replace from underneath the rear.

 

one other thing, as regards to style, it has always been my belief to buy early in the model year, after all my 04 and 05 looks just like your 09 but were significantly cheaper to buy used, whereas your 09 was just a little cheaper than the newly redesigned 2010 model.

 

To give you a little more data, I owned a 2008 and a 2005 at the same time. To me, they both drove the same. I sold the 2008, kept the 2005 and installed the BT plate and strut bar. Couldn't be happier. I also installed the backup camera and AUX inputs. Best car I've ever had. Love it.

Oh, one more piece of data (which is really good looking at the facts), The 2008 had 30k miles, and the 2005 had 150k miles, they both drove identical. And that says alot about the quality of these little cars IMO.

 

they changed the spring rates on the 06+ models