We got the car at around 165K-170K miles from my wife's parents and we aren't quite certain when they last replaced the timing belt. Toyota's car service guide recommends replacing it every 90K miles. Today our mechanic voiced his concern that they don't have any record of replacing the belt since 170K miles, when they first started servicing our car. Assuming that the belt hasn't been replaced since 90K miles, he said it's not worth it to replace the belt (and water pump - I guess that usually gets replaced at the same time?) on a car this old. Some Googling leads me to believe that a timing belt (and water pump) replacement will be ~$800-$1000. Given the current used car market, that doesn't seem super unreasonable even though it's probably way more than the car is worth.
Outside this potential issue, the car seems to be in good shape. It does seem to drink oil, but they've never commented on it being an issue other than the dipstick being low during oil changes.
Some other tricky unknowns and constraints:
- We may relocate somewhere mid-2023 where we would no longer want a car. This is still uncertain and it's not clear yet what the probability of that move is.
- We drive ~15K miles per year which seems too much to cost-effectively lease a car in the short term, until future plans become clearer.