It's a bit more complicated than that IMO.
First, yes, JT is right that this is a "suburb" (not really suburb but outer regions of the City of Toronto) vs. "downtown" issue. For Americans it's important to note that Toronto did not develop in the way that some US cities did where the downtown core is an abandoned, poor ghetto. The downtown is thriving and VERY expensive to live in. The outer regions are where people who either couldn't afford to live downtown or who didn't want to live in cramped circumstances moved to. Yes, there are exceptions, for example, not far from Rob Ford is one of the wealthiest areas in the city where houses are on par with an area like Rosedale that's immediately north of downtown. But anyway, for many decades there was no investment in any kind of infrastructure for the people in these areas so the only recourse they had were their cars. It's easy to say "they just want to drive" but you go out and live in one of these areas and you will quickly see that this is your only option and it is not of your making, it is due to the lack of foresight of politicians over many years. So yes, Ford's voting block is hostile to infrastructure spending downtown (which they don't see as beneficial to them), hostile to high property taxes (many of them have large properties), and hostile to what they see as waste in the municipal government which has brought them personally very few benefits (actually probably true).
The other thing to keep in mind is that we had a very leftist mayor before this who IMO spent our $ very recklessly and irresponsibly. There is a LOT of waste and inefficiency in our city. I know that is the rallying cry of the conservative but it's absolutely true even from where I am standing. The City was amalgamated with the outer regions years ago but this amalgamation, forced down everyone's throats by the conservatives in power was touted as promoting efficiency. It just hasn't played out that way. A visit to one of the municipal offices and you'll quickly see how ridiculous the system is.
Case in point, when we lived in Little Italy, a section of Toronto where street parking is common, you had to get a permit to park on the street. I had to go down to one of the city offices to procure a permit for our second car. I was the only person in line and there were about 6 or 7 clerks just sitting there twiddling their thumbs. There is NOT enough work to justify all of them being employed but this is a legacy situation. What's more, it makes absolutely no sense that we haven't moved to online applications for parking permits, like every normal city in the 21st century. But again, this is the sort of "waste" that a lot of people saw and Ford's dumb, though populist "I'm going to cut the gravy train!" resonated with them.
For the rest of us it's a shitty situation because yes, Ford is an incompetent moron who was incapable of actually achieving much. But the alternative was a spend-like-there-is-no-tomorrow candidate (Pantalone) and another candidate (Smitherman) who was embroiled in his own corruption scandal and is commonly referred to as "Slitherman". I didn't vote for Ford, nor would I vote for Ford, but it's not that hard to see how he got the votes. It was the perfect storm.