A very long time ago, the service bay attendant at the dealer told me that my car very likely has a timing chain rather than a belt, depending upon when my '98 was built. Well, the decal on the door shows it was built November of '97, so 9 years and 120,000 miles later nothing's broken yet. I find this very encouraging, and wonder did all the later Corolla models keep the chain, or did they eventually go back to the belt?