This content was prepared by Toyota and is being published by Driven as Advertorial.
Is dealer servicing still worth it once a car is out of warranty? It's a fair question for owners of vehicles that are 10, 12 or 15 years old, and one worth thinking through before defaulting to the local garage to save a few dollars.
It's also a question worth examining, because for a nation like ours – one that hangs onto its cars as long as we do (more than a third of New Zealand vehicles are more than 14 years old), it may be costing owners more than it saves. When a new car is under warranty, dealer servicing is partly about protecting the warranty itself and the resale value that depends on a complete service history. As years pass and the warranty expires, owners reasonably ask what they're still paying for.
Servicing through Toyota stores doesn’t stop being worth it, but what you're servicing for changes. It becomes about maintenance to protect safety and reliability, and to make sure the car will start on an icy morning.
That calls for a different approach, and that’s what’s behind Service 10+, an option Toyota New Zealand is offering for vehicles ten years and older. It isn't a stripped-back or budget service: it keeps the core inspections and safety checks of a standard Toyota service, carried out by Toyota certified technicians like Nilesh Kumar.
If you asked Nilesh about working on older cars, he'd tell you he's worked on some vehicles for so long, replacing part after part, that they're arguably no longer the same car that first came in.
Known affectionately by his colleagues at Auckland City Toyota as the ‘Toyota Repair Machine’, Nilesh has spent 20 years as a Toyota certified technician. In that time, he's diagnosed thousands of engine problems, solved countless mechanical mysteries, and probably heard every strange engine noise imaginable. If a Toyota could talk, his colleagues joke, it would ask for Nilesh by name.
"I do servicing, repair work and warranty work, the big jobs, engines, transmissions, gearboxes," he says. "Whatever's there, I do it."
Some of his favourite work is on the older vehicles, the ones that have been coming back for years, and he's often the go-to when his workmates have a problem with an older car. One in particular stands out: an old BJ40 V8 petrol Land Cruiser, the kind with a points distributor and a carburetor.
"I enjoy that one, because it takes me back," he says. "Back in Fiji I used to work on all the old Land Cruisers. It feels familiar."
It's a reminder that a Toyota store isn't only geared up for the newest models on the forecourt. The knowledge to look after older cars, the ones many owners assume have been left behind, is still there.
For the Kiwis who want to keep their Toyota running for as long as possible, it reinforces Toyota Stores as the smart choice for servicing older cars, done by the people who know the vehicle best.