An Albertan social worker got a free 2003 Corolla when she traded in her 1990 Corolla wagon with 995,000km on it to Kingsway Toyota in Edmonton. Manual transmission. The only major work other than typical wear stuff was her transmission which went at about 550,000km. Engine is original. Mostly highway kms shuttling kids all around the province.
I'm going to fully dealer maintain my 3 and see if it's in better shape than my self maintained 5 at 180,000km. It's not much more expensive than regular shops for scheduled maintenance stuff. My Skyactiv 3 requires synthetic for example and it's $73 at a dealer taxes in. I paid $240 taxes in for 24,000km service which included a bunch more stuff and taking the brakes apart and lubricating the slider pins, which increases the life of the brakes. This is something I failed to do with my 5 when I changed the brakes myself and 100,000km later my inside pads had a full 8mm left but outside pads only 4mm left. Maybe I should've switched them around lol.
I could take my car into a quick lube place for warranty approved service but then they want me to come back every 6 instead of 8,000km, will charge me more for that oil change with Fram filters, and then try to upsell me with everything.
My Sienna I'm planning to do a hybrid maintenance service, do the oil changes myself and then every fourth oil change take it into a dealer for a maintenance package and have them check stuff, lube things I wouldn't lube myself, etc.
Cars need to get maintained, that's a fact. The capital cost of purchasing one is really just a smidge in the bucket over a vehicle's lifetime. One will pay the car's value on fuel in 10 years at 24,000km a year..
Regularily scheduled maintenance costs about 2 to 3 cents a km at the dealer. My newer car currently depreciates at about 10 cents a km. I don't need to tell you what I'd rather spend.