MKIII-DRIFTKING said:
LOL, I wouldn't got there. I love MKIVs as well, if not more then MKIIIs. They each have their touch.
I really wish we had input from someone who worked at toyota or something. It would be interesting to see what's their reason.
I work at Toyota, and for the most part, generally speaking, parts are pretty consistently priced across the model and year range. Sometimes it's more for this and that, or the other way around, etc, but generally speaking it's pretty close.
Toyota does "menu" pricing and "market" pricing as well on a lot of things, such as brake pads, rotors, oil filters, air filter, etc, etc, so these get regulated more closely and equalized between Toyota models.
More vehicle-specific or what are called "slow-moving parts" are higher priced items, such as interior parts that are costly to keep producing in small quantities for the rare time that someone actually buys them (door panels, seat material, etc).
Toyota's pricing systems are quite complex, and dealers can sometimes have their own pricing indexes as well, which can throw things off, such as lower priced items get bumped up in price a bit, which can sometimes move parts into the higher-priced category.
Generally speaking though, Toyota tries to cater to the needs of the owners and keeps parts prices very consistant.