Eh. Not to dog on you, but the Samurai is kind of a bad example. There weren't nearly as many sold in the '90s as Yarises sell today. There are still a good number of '90s Corollas and Civics though, hell even Cavaliers are still running out there. The Yaris might start to get feeling a bit jalopy when it becomes 20 years old, but it'll probably still be there. Annecdotal evidence? My bud has a Toyota Echo (which Toyota renamed the Yaris about 2 generations back) and a Geo Metro from the mid '90s. Both are still running decently on the original drivetrains. His problem is getting replacement parts for everything else that's failing on them. Because they're not cars that people want to keep running, like a Fox Body Mustang, finding parts for them can be difficult. If the Echo/Yaris was iconic as the Falcon/Mustang, he probably wouldn't have that problem. I mean, let's be honest, if you called up an auto parts store looking for something for an '82 Chevette they'll laugh and wonder how you've kept it running for so long.
Bring it, bitch. http://articles.latimes.com/1988-09-22/business/fi-3229_1_suzuki-samurai Meanwhile, Yarpuses are flying out the door at about a thousand a month right now, down from ~2500 a month. Anecdotal evidence? I owned two Samurais. They weren't pieces of shit. They were jeeps, and if you drove them like GTis you got what you deserved. But they were also 1300cc k-cars and they weren't built to last. I killed one just by driving it to Vancouver and back with four people in it. People don't want to keep the Fox bodies running. They were just around for fifteen fucking years so there's no shortage of parts. And by the way. Here's the problem, yo - you freely admit you don't know how to work on cars, but you really like cars. I freely admit that I've forgotten more about cars than most people will ever know and, you know, these days I kind of hate them. I took apart my first Volkswagen at the age of 6. I have a preposterous amount of schadenfreude towards VW but I'll say this: a 6-year-old can work on a Beetle. A Yarpus? He'd be too embarrassed.On Wednesday, Suzuki officials acknowledged that they expect sales to plunge to just 2,000 a month for the remainder of 1988, below June's sales of 2,199, the lowest sales month on record for Samurai. For all of 1988, Suzuki executives believe that sales will fall to 80,000 units, down slightly from 1987's 83,000.