This was my first car that I ever had, and it is still going strong, even through it has 220,000+ miles on it. I've never had any serious problems with it and have been able to do most of the maintenance myself. Just recently had to replace the rear right strut, even that was straight forward and pretty easy. The transmission is nice and smooth. The only real problem I have with it is the A/C has stopped working, and this is because of a computer malfunction. It is not so bad in the winter, but in the summer, it gets very hot and sitting in the car can sometimes be unbearable. Even with this problem, I still think that it is a great car, and because it is a Toyota, it still has many more miles to go.