[NOTE: Read the note at the bottom of this post where I explain that it was our fault, not the Yaris’. Now we’ve had it for a few weeks, and we’re enjoying it, and it’s been trouble-free.]

Our ’96 Saturn bit the dust a few days ago. After seriously considering a $4000 Jetta that turned out to need $2200 in work, we bought a brand new Toyota Yaris.

That was yesterday.

This is today:

It intermittently doesn’t start. It’s as if the battery is dead, except: 1. It starts without problems sometimes; 2. It has failed to start after having been driven for 45 minutes continuously. I’m no car guy, but the intermittency of it bothers me if only because the Gods of Perverseness just about guarantee that it’s going to start fine at the dealer’s.

It’s a manual transmission, so an intermittent failure to start is particularly dangerous: Some of the people in my family have been known to stall in traffic. (Ok, me too.)

I haven’t found any serious starting issues discussed on the Web by Yaris owners, so it’s likely that this is just one of those problems things put together by humans have. And until it stopped starting (which is preferably to its starting to stop) it was fun to drive, the back seat is roomier than you’d think, and it gets 34 mpg in town and 40 mpg on the highway, if the Feds are to be believed. Not to mention that it’s red.

The dealer, Toyota of Watertown, has acted honorably about the whole thing so far. [Tags: cars autos yaris toyota]

It turns out that it was totally our fault. You have to push the clutch waaaaay in for the starter to start. further than you have to push it in to disengage the clutch. What a bunch of schmucks we are. But, the dealer has been kind. I assume they are only mocking us behind our backs.

Categories: Uncategorized dw