Hi folks,

I'm hoping you can help me out with this decision. Here are the choices:

1998 Nissan Sentra GXE -- auto, air, 72,000km or 44,000miles, $8000 CDN

1997 Toyota Tercel CE -- auto, air, 44,000km or 27,000miles, $7000 CDN

Both cars are in excellent shape. Looking to use each car until it dies.
Our other car is maintained with oil, filter, fluid flush religiously twice
a year. Rustproofing done on each annually.

My questions:
Which will last longer?
Which will have lesser maintenance costs over its remaining life?
Ultimately, which is the better buy?

Since you are not worried about resale value... I'd lean tward the Nissan
Sentra over the Toyota Tercel CE.

While I am typicaly a Toyota fan... i've never been a fan of the Tercel 3a
series engine. Even if you were to swap out the stock 1.5l engine in favor
of 4a-fe corolla engine, the nissan engine still has one point in it's
favor. the ga16 series uses a timming chain, rather then a belt. I'm not
sure if the 4a will easily go in a later tercel, i've been told it fits in
the earlier ones. While Toyota engines particularly the 4a series will
practily last forever, that timming belt will need to be replaced at some
point. They get slack, and eventually will brake. The nissan's chain
probally won't break in it's lifetime. I had a chain in my old 1979 Toyota
Corolla, and still do after over 500,000km.

Tercel engines between roughly 1987 and 1994 were not considered to be their
best run by some. Issues with valve guides and rod berrings are common
complaints. Unsure about later models.

In the Tercel's favor, the 3a and 4a series engines have been in service for
a very long time. The 3a-c was in service as early as 1983 that i've seen
personaly in the corolla-tercel. The 4a series i'm positive was used till
atleast 1998. If it fails, it shouldn't much of a problem getting a used
one at all, or a rebuilt. Nissan engine doesn't have this much history to
it, I believe it was first used in 1991 for the Sentra.

In the Nissan's favor it's got more room and is far more comfortable then
the Tercel.

Gas Mileage I'm not sure if you'd notice the diffrence. I haven't owned my
1998 nissan base model long enough to judge, but I observed 35mpg on arco
gas. In theory the Tercel is rated higher on fuel effency but don't know
anyone with a 1997 tercel. Now if we are talking 1997 corolla... had a
friend who observed 40mpg using Chevron high octain gas. I'm too lazy to
convert to KM/L. And I do have the manual base model, the 1997 Corolla I'm
refering to was also a manual base model. I don't bother looking at
automatics as I would never consider one.

Handling... test driving one 1997 tercel I did find it a bit more fun to
drive vs my 1998 base model Sentra.

Rusting I have no clue about, we don't salt the roads often here so I'm not
worried about it.

Personaly, I won't consider Tercel at all. It's smaller then the Corolla in
body and engine and it's difficult to say if you'll save fuel. Corolla
would be a diffrent story but I went with the Nissan Sentra base model. It
was cheeper, in my case roughly $4200 in canadian dollars, and use of the
chain rather then the belt to me means one less thing to screw with. While
I think resale value would suck, I plan to drive it it's dead.



"Raj Capoor" <rcapoor (AT) qnx (DOT) com> wrote

Thanks a lot guys. The truckload of info helped. I think we're gonna go
for the Nissan.

"matt zukowski" <#z#ak#ez#u#k#e (AT) periastron (DOT) com> wrote

You're welcome.

Good luck,

John D.
(1973 Datsun 1200 and 1995 Nissan 200SX SE)




"Raj Capoor" <rcapoor (AT) qnx (DOT) com> wrote