Originally Posted by supton
....Both have some bad years. I think 1998-2002 for Corolla was bad for oil burning? The early years of 1ZZ-FE had that problem, but then they fixed it. Prior to that the engine had a timing belt. The early RAV4's likewise had a timing belt, but then got the 2.4L 2AZ-FE, which can be an oil burner--I'd hold out for the 2.5L 2AR-FE, but if shopping on price you might not find in your range. And for just a runabout it might not matter at all. Since you said 4AT I'm going to assume the V6 RAV4 and the later model RAV4's (with 6AT's) are not in the running.
The 4AT's seem reasonably rugged in these applications. I think both have dipsticks. If the fluid isn't burnt I think you are ok: yeah the owners should change the fluid on a regular basis, but this vintage seems to shrug off infrequent transmission oil changes. Just looking bad should not be a major concern like it is on other cars.
Everything else seems conventional in terms of wear and tear and usual problems. RAV4 would be higher off the ground, have a bigger trunk; I presume higher price and maybe higher insurance. Corolla probably has higher NVH, lower to the ground, still has the Toyota tax (on purchase) but should eek out significantly better mpg. Not sure if tire costs, brake costs, strut costs, etc would be much different between the two; but as a guess, everything would be cheaper on the Corolla.
Been a while since I drove the older Corolla, I want to say they tend to wander on the road. Typical dead Toyota steering....
I have a 1999 Toyota Corolla VE... (value edition) It has about 230,000 km (about 143,000 miles). Essentially was gifted to my elderly mother at about 100,000 miles. Car was an ex-rental, for the beginning of its life.
Has been good... but from the point of receipt the A245E 4 speed A/T has had a noisy final drive. I went to one of the better-reputation transmission shops,here, in the Metro Vancouver area - and they said that this transmission DOES have a tendency to take out final drives. Having said this, my daughter's 2005 Corolla LE has the same transmission, it has about 100,000 miles, and it does NOT have a bad final drive. In all of the time that we have had the '99 with its noisy final drive, I would say that the noise has NOT gotten worse. There are no economics in changing-out the transmission, 'cuz a baseline rebuild would be about $2500... more than the value of the car. So, run it to failure.
Only other two problems with this car are: i) consumes a bit of oil.... just need to watch the level, and add when necessary. This is not problematic for me. It is my habit to check the oil every 2nd fill-up anyways. The cheapest fix is to add oil. Does NOT puff on start-up or burn blue on the "over-run". Other problem, not a big one, is that the plug lead for cylinder four went south. I McGiver'd a change-out with my '99 Camry's plug lead (for now) as the Camry is not being run.
I would say that the car tracks fine on the road. I like the hydraulic power steering on this car, and on my 99 Camry - more than the EPS on my '17 Mazda6. I do NOT find fault with Toyota power steering (same... as on my daughter's '05 Corolla). I would really, really caution you to NOT buy anything near when Toyota started to use EPS. They came up with a totally sh*t system, in my opinion. The '09 through '13 Corolla was BEYOND undriveable. Idiot engineers, to have let that one out the door!!!