In a Class of its Own

By Bill McLauchlan


Pssst! You might have missed it, but a significant Canadian automotive milestone slipped past virtually unnoticed last weekend. That’s when, 25 years ago, on November 30,1988, the first Canadian-built Toyota, a compact Corolla sedan, rolled off the company’s brand-new Cambridge, Ontario, assembly line.

So that added some extra interest for me when another Corolla milestone moment came to light today. It concerns a Toronto-area driving school instructor who has just traded in his Corolla for a new one, after clocking up a million kilometres … well, pretty close to a million. The actual odometer reading was 998,000. Here’s how it all happened.

Not long after Rajah Sellathurai moved from India to Canada some three decades ago, a friend gave him a suggestion about purchasing a car. Buy a Toyota, Rajah was advised, because they’re reliable and last a long time.

CNW Group/Toyota Canada

So he heeded that advice and bought a Tercel, enjoying all 540,000 kilometres he put on it. Then he tried a Corolla – and has been fiercely loyal to the model ever since. Having just purchased his sixth Corolla a couple of months ago, he cumulatively drove his previous five Corollas more than three million total kilometres. That includes almost one million (998,665 km to be precise) on his cherished green 2001 model. His love affair with the car came full circle today when he visited Toyota's Cambridge plant where his Corolla was created.

The made-in-Canada Corolla is the world’s number-one selling nameplate of all time, with more than 1.3 million sold to date in Canada – more than 80 per cent of the Corollas sold are still on the road today.

Rajah relies on his car to the tune of about 350 kilometres a day. Having traded in his previous Corolla for a new red 2013 model in August, he has already put about 20,000 kilometres on it, driving it from his Brampton home to his driving school in Orangeville north-west of the city. It’s used all day long as he teaches students with it, before he commutes back home again.

After seeing what the Corolla has done for Rajah, three other driving instructors he employs also decided to purchase one. So all of them now have Corollas that are about six or seven years old, with 400,000 to 500,000 kilometres logged on each of them.

CNW Group/Toyota Canada

When asked what the key is to having his 2001 model reach attain almost one million kilometres, Rajah said it’s really quite simple. “I’m very strict about never missing an appointment for regular maintenance and I always take it to a Toyota dealership,” said the father of two grown children. “It never would have lasted so long going somewhere else.”

He said he never intended to keep his Corolla for one million klicks – once it hit 500,000 he just kept telling himself he’d keep it for another hundred thousand, but it just kept going and he never had any issues with it other than the tires wearing out.

Finally, he decided that 12 years was long enough, and it was time for a change. “I didn’t really have to get a new one. I could have easily gotten another 500,000 more kilometres from it,” he laughed, adding that as much as he loves his new Corolla for all the advantages it has he misses his beloved previous model. “But I get to see it whenever I take my new one in for service,” he said, noting that he bought his new car from Woodbine Toyota, which still has his previous green vehicle on site so he can look at it nostalgically while his new car is taken care of. “Eventually, I’ll grow just as attached to my new one because I expect to get one million kilometres from it too.”

With all the driving involved at work, his Corolla gets a break at vacation time. That’s when Rajah and his wife travel with their daughter – so they can all enjoy her 2009 Toyota 4Runner. “She’s a lawyer who only has a short drive to work so I think it would take her about 40 years to get one million kilometres on it,” he joked