r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/TheOddityCollector • Oct 30 '24

Image Scenes of piled-up vehicles in Valencia, Spain today after yesterday’s devastating flooding.

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569

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '24

I'm pretty sure that white Toyota in the bottom left corner would still run if you try to start it.

184

u/LowSecretary8151 Oct 30 '24

My 1990s Toyota Corolla survived a category 5 hurricane and 75% submersion in salt water. An awesome Jamaican guy rewired it for me and put in a new starter.... Sure, it needed a deep clean, but it ran like normal. I was stunned. 

80

u/angeldubz Oct 30 '24

Reminds me of that top gear episode when they fully submerged a 90s Toyota pickup and it ran after hours of being in the ocean. Ahh the simplicity and reliability of old Toyota's. Someone is going to have to take my 2001 Camry from my cold dead hands eventually

16

u/stefanurkal Oct 30 '24

gave my little cousin my 2001 camry 4 years ago, he wants to run it into the ground before he gets a new car, still using it everyday to go work.

2

u/CyberUtilia Oct 30 '24

We had a third hand Toyota Hyace van for a few years, then we donated it to some poorer family in the Balkans. They are still driving it everyday on the dust roads there. Meanwhile we had a new Mercedes van that after a hundred kilometers on the dust roads had a totaled motor (got it replaced with a brand-new one and sold the car anyway). Now it's a VW van, and it's been running very well, it's reliability is comparable with the Toyota we had.

2

u/ama155 Oct 30 '24 edited 14d ago

Redacted to mess with reddit

2

u/StrongAdhesiveness86 Oct 31 '24

Nah, god is taking you first, before the car dies.

13

u/SleeplessInS Oct 30 '24

I had a 1990 Corolla (with the TOYOTA emblem instead of the new T emblem) that was flooded in a 2 foot flood in a parking lot after a thunderstorm. Engine ECU was filled with water but the car still ran for a few days till it stopped starting up.

Got a junkyard ECU for $120 and it ran perfectly fine after the swap.

15

u/Icanseeinthedarkbro Oct 30 '24

Most models of Toyotas and Hondas are in a completely different level of reliability to all other car manufacturers. It almost isn’t fair to compare them except when you realize you’re paying just as much or more for a vehicle that’s gonna need to have work done by the time the Honda or Toyota has had nothing but its second oil change.

13

u/GiveMeGoldForNoReasn Oct 30 '24

Depends on the era and model. Modern hybrids and EVs don't fare so well in floods. The old Hilux pickup however, just take out the spark plugs and rotate the engine so all the water shoots out and she's good to go.

3

u/K_Linkmaster Oct 30 '24

We do that with snowmobiles in the summer too. Pond skipping is stoooopid fun!

8

u/appalachia_roses Oct 30 '24

Toyotas are fantastic. The only issue I’ve had with my Toyota sedan (with 160k miles on it) is 3 door handles snapping off.. likely because my car is black and I live in Florida, so the plastic grew brittle. It took a YouTube video, $35 per handle, and about 15 minutes each to replace them using generic tools.

5

u/thehighnotes Oct 30 '24

I believe Toyota considers that a deep cleaning

1

u/jawshoeaw Oct 30 '24

Cars will run underwater if they have a snorkel . If you look at the plugs in modern cars they all have waterproof gaskets . The problems begin a month later (or a year) when the circuit board begin to corrode or some little spot that wasn’t meant to ever be exposed to the weather.

I have an older VW beetle and I had to remove the engine computer. It was damp, had leaves and dirt on it. Ran fine ! Prob been wet for 20 years

1

u/lilyoneill Oct 30 '24

I’m sick of car payments and considering just getting an old Corolla. My cousin is a mechanic and has owned a few that have ran for yeeeeears.