Thread: Small Runabout Car

I have a Hilux and a 1990 Corolla, the Corolla preceeded the Hilux by about seven years and I have kept it for the exact reason as the OP, to offset the Ute kms. It lives in 6 monthly intervals as it will be disposed of when it doesn't get a easy WOF, but that hasn't happened yet. I also like to use it as a road end car.

When my partner and I first met, she also had a Corolla, same shape and colour, just a bit newer, it got written off in 2019 and we replaced it with a 2005 Corolla wagon (same as the Fielder) for about 4k which has become the main driving wagon for plenty of long trips and plenty of commuting.
In four years of ownership, it has clocked up 90k km and the running total for repairs (brake discs) is $140. So irregular maintenance and depreciation to date has been ~$25 per week, but I expect that number will get lower as time goes on.
All of our Corollas have been very reliable and cheap to keep on the road. Doing ones own servicing helps and it is cheap and easy to service a Corolla and none of them have needed any real money spent on repairs.
I had a Caldina as a work wagon for a few years that had been absolutely hammered and kept getting hammered and it never ever missed a beat.
If I was buying another vehicle for a commuting runabout I would probably just default to another old Corolla or Caldina, there may be better options out there, having clocked up as many Corolla kms as I have, I know what I am getting and what to expect and can roughly budget accordingly.

One word of advice if you go down this road, the manual gearbox in the older Corolla is better than the auto gearbox. The inverse applies to the Caldina gearboxes. This is from Dog and Lemon.