most avg joes and janes who own imports tend to have a false peace of mind, figuring that their cars are indistructable (NOT if you don't service/change your oil!!!). My typical question raised would be: how many Toyota owners out there that you know of would rigidly abide by their scheduled service interval?? How many???
I know only roughly 1/4 of them would do so on a regular basis, about 1/3 to 1/2 of them are tempremental meanig that they would claimed that they are always "busy" and skip services with all kinds of excuses until something major breaks then they bring their vehicles in and complain/whine.
About 1/4 of them never service their car on a regular/scheduled basis until their car starting to smoke and engine makes funny noises or their lease are up. Then they spend their "rather precious" time complaining about Toyota's quality and poor service and such on the internet.
IMHO it all boils down to the quality of bulk oil used in dealerships and how "rigid" the owner abide by their scheduled service interval. If neither of these 2 can be met, I bet ya not only a Toyota would fail, but so does GeeM, Ford, Mazda, Honda, Nissan......
Conclusion: thank goodness for BITOG, I'm more at-ease now knowing that all these time my believe in rigid regular servicing schedule and OC have paid off with reliable vehicles and trouble-free miles for over 2 decades, and more to come....
Q.
p.s. For those who don't look at their own OCI/service maintenance schedule or can never understand what "severe service schedule" on their manual means, they should consider looking into their mirror and ask themselves why....