Our Verso Corolla Verso went off to the garage today to have its heater fixed - I have just been told by the Toyota garage that it is essentially dead. The head gasket has gone which means:

£700 for a diagnosis whether the engine is damaged beyond repair
£2500 for replacement of a gasket if the engine is okay
£9000 for a new engine fitted if the cylinder block/pistons are warped.

£9000 is probably twice what the car is worth it is 7 years and 13 days 'old' from a Warranty perspective. This is where it gets interesting. Thanks to this site I was quickly able to determine that this is a known problem and that the warranty has been extended to seven years or 100,000 as a result (Toyota CR have confirmed this today).

If Toyota had bothered to warn us and what signs to look for then we would have been okay. The red heating light came on briefly and went off on 26th November - inside the warranty period. As the red light went off quickly and was not on for long we were not too worried but the heating had packed up - I assumed some valve into the heater matrix had failed.

As a precaution we did book the car in for a service with a Toyota dealer but today was the earliest we could manage - this is 13 days beyond the warranty period. We are comfortably inside the mileage limit at 87,000 miles. Toyota Customer Relations have decided we are on our own - this seems very unfair bearing in mind this is a well known issue and we are on the cusp of the warranty period.

Any advice on what we can do now?