I Finally Got Rid Of My Unreliable Toyota And It Was The Best Car Decision I Made This Year

“Just get a Scion iQ. It’s like a Smart, but with Toyota reliability.” Three years ago, that was the statement that sent my wife on a journey to buy a car that was as cute and as fun as one of my Smart Fortwos, but without the headache-inducing reliability quirks. Unfortunately, the specific Scion iQ she bought was anything but reliable, and after making us pull our hair out for about two of our three years of ownership, we finally sent the car to a new home. I thought I’d feel like a failure for not being able to keep this car fixed, but it was actually a big weight off my shoulders.

My wife, Sheryl, bought her little 67,000-mile 2012 Scion iQ with her own money in December 2023, and at the time, the car was everything she wanted it to be. It was big on character, but so tiny that it could fit into the smallest parking spaces in Chicago. The diminutive size also made it easy to drive. Add in the 35-plus miles per gallon, and the car was stupendously cheap to run. At first, it really was like my Smarts, but better.

Truth be told, cars don’t enter our fleet to make content out of them. If I can write about a car purchase, that’s great. But it’s a bonus, not the purpose, of a car purchase. I have never written a single article about my Buell Lightning CityX XB9SX because it never breaks and never does anything worth writing about. Most of my motorcycles and cars might get a single article before I move on. I buy cars to enjoy them. Sheryl buys cars that she thinks she’ll enjoy driving 20,000 to 30,000 miles a year.

In other words, if I write a bunch of articles about the same car, either I adore it, like my Smarts, or something horrible has gone wrong. At first, the iQ was the former. I loved comparing the car to my Smarts. I loved taking it down Route 66 and up the Rocky Mountains. I enjoyed seeing how we could make the car a little better. Then, the honeymoon was over, and the novelty wore off. And then came the problems.

I won’t rehash everything here. I’ve written a detailed series about the iQ that you can review by clicking here. The short of it is that the transmission whined and caused power loss issues, the engine had a mystery shudder that I could not solve, and the aftermarket cruise control died at least two times, killing three accelerator pedals and causing a permanent limp mode. Also, the car rusted as quickly as a Mazda from the mid-2000s.

Once the novelty wore off, everyone started hating the Scion. My mom said that she lost respect for Sheryl, and Sheryl lost lucrative contracts. Sheryl’s clients even mocked her. Driving that car was legitimately costing us tens of thousands of dollars.

My Wife Moved On

Back in January, my lovely Sheryl finally decided that it was time to move on. She thought about buying a Hyundai Genesis, but decided to take my Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI. We also added a Mazda Miata ND that we sometimes use for client meetings and other events where people will be seeing what Sheryl shows up in. As for the VW, Sheryl loved the story of Rudolf Diesel and why he invented his namesake engine. It very much aligned with how she sees the world. I needed to get rid of the car, anyway. It’s been happily ever after.

I’m not exaggerating. The VW needed a few odds and ends from sitting for a few years, but it’s otherwise been extremely dependable over the roughly 13,000 miles she’s driven it. The car has even been great for Sheryl’s image. Her clients are paying her more, and in just this year alone, her income has been higher than maybe the past three years combined. It’s wild what a car will do.

I promised to sell the Scion in an article I wrote in June, but I fell into the profoundly stupid rabbit hole of trying to fix it again. I spent the summer trying to figure out why the engine ran and stalled like it had a bad misfire, but produced no codes. Now, it’s fall. I still couldn’t figure out the engine, and neither did a local shop.

I Convinced Myself To Let It Go

I admit, the decision to sell the car was a difficult one. When I was a kid and then a teen, nothing came easy. If I got a nice thing, I had to keep it nice, and I had to learn how to repair it, because if it broke, that was it; there wasn’t enough money to buy another. I think this has spilled over into adulthood, because I’ll keep fixing broken crap long after I should give up. I mean, when my clothes dryer caught fire earlier this year, I didn’t throw it out; I rebuilt it. The dryer then broke five more times, and I rebuilt it five more times. It took a lot to convince myself to buy a new washer and dryer.

With the Scion, I felt like I was giving up. I felt like if I just worked harder, spent more time, or spent more money, I could get the iQ perfect again. Maybe I thought that punching the clock on the Scion made me a failure. But you readers taught me that it was okay to throw in the towel sometimes. After all, continuing to invest in something when the cost outweighs the benefits could be called a sunk cost.

So, I looked up what high-mileage iQs sell for in my area. Based on my research, a private owner could probably get $3,500 for a fully functional iQ with around 132,000 miles in Chicago. I figured that, after subtracting the excessive rust, the gas pedal problems, and the engine stuttering, my iQ was worth about half of $3,500. I posted the car on Facebook Marketplace, asking for $2,000.

I don’t really play the game of posting a high price and making people negotiate. I’ll post a car for a few hundred dollars more than what I really want. Often, someone comes by and buys the car at my target price within a week. I even write an overly detailed listing that stops short of telling prospective buyers not to buy my car. I never want anyone to feel like I’m screwing them.

Expecting the average Facebook Marketplace denizen to read was a bridge too far. The vast majority of messages were from people who blindly clicked the “Is this still available?” button. For them, I set up an auto-reply that told them to read the listing. This alone weeded out about 100 people.

Every single person who made it past the auto-reply and offered me a reasonable price somehow still didn’t read the listing. Almost everyone who did read the listing sent me wildly low offers. The lowest offer I got from a local was $300, which is less than scrap value. The highest offer from a local was $1,000.

The highest offer from Facebook came from an older gentleman in Wisconsin who consulted a Toyota mechanic. He wasn’t willing to go any higher than $1,300, and I respect that. He had the decency to do real research and even called me.

The actual highest offer? To my surprise, it was Carvana. Their offer was $1,500. I didn’t want to sell the car to Carvana, but since nobody on Facebook was being serious, I took it. Carvana sent a guy over the very next day. He got in the car, hooked it up to a scanner, and drove it around the block. Amusingly, this was the first time since February that the car completed a drive without any issue.

As someone joked on our Discord, it was like the car knew it was going to Carvana and was trying to behave, in hopes that maybe I’d cancel the transaction. The Carvana guy joked that I was the first seller he’d seen in a long time who might have undersold their car’s condition. Therefore, he wasn’t forced to knock down the offer. Well, I fully expected the car to fall apart during the test drive. I didn’t undersell it; the iQ managed to be a solid car for 30 minutes.

Sorry, little Scion. The Carvana guy slapped a sad-looking “WHOLESALE” sticker on the windshield, loaded the car onto his truck, and drove off. I got paid the next business day.

Now, the iQ is gone, and this chapter of my life is finished. You will no longer hear anything about this car, and after today, it’ll be little more than a memory. My only keepsake from the car is its mint-condition owner’s manual.

Sheryl says that the car served its purpose, and seeing it go was bittersweet. She drove it 54,500 miles in a little over two years, and I’ve driven it 500 miles since February. 55,000 miles in three years is impressive for a city car, and we had so many great memories with it. But it was time to say goodbye, and now I couldn’t be happier. Maybe, with some luck, it’ll get repaired and make someone else happy.

Top graphic image: author