Today, I get a call that the car's bucking and acting bad. She said it was the same symptons as before. I said okay, call Toyota, I will give you my car and take it to the dealer. No lights yet were on.

I pick the car up, less than 2 blocks from the house, it bucks, and jerks and boom, the lights come on and I lost 2nd gear completely. Same freaking issue.

This was a replacement Camry that was MADE for us that we waited 2 months for because the first one was part of the 160 batch that had these issues. Sorry there is more too it that Toyota is saying. Now another one.
She is done with the POS Camry. She wants something else. She is willing to give Toyota a chance again 3rd time and get a Avalon or a Lexus side, but no more Camry. Or she will go somewhere else.

Sad to see this, I recommended that car to her, and she got it and hasn't been happy since.

First one blew at 300 miles
second one at 1800 miles.

I will keep everyone informed.

 

Sorry to hear that. You would think a replacement tranny would do the trick, but I guess not. Lets just hope this situation doesn't turn out to be the same one as Honda's tranny fiasco.

 

Sorry to hear about your problem with Toyota. I would definately give the new VW Passat a try, I am absolutely sure that you and your wife will love it.

 

out of the frying pan and into the fire if you want to avoid reliability problems

 

The Passat has been consistently on CR lists of recommended cars for the past 4-5 years or so now. On top of that the new Passat, along with most of the new VW model line-up has sparkling reliablity (Toureg not-withstanding, but that will be replaced soon with a much better and more reliable version) and is relatively problem free. The same can not be said for the Camry (fragging transmissions) which is ironically recommended by CR. The Passat hasn't had any problems and the Camry has been having serious problems.

G35 TX I urge you to go out on a lim and at least try out the Passat despite the nay-sayers (mostly Toyota and Honda fanboys). I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

 

say what you want VW has been bottom feeding with Mercedes and Land Rover on reliability charts for the past decade and I doubt they just woke up this year and suddenly started cracking out bulletproof cars. Something like that doesnt happen overnight. The new VW models have been out for a cool year, hardly an indicator of its long term reliability

 

Like I said the Passat has consistently been recommend by CR for around 5 years now, so no it didn't happen over night. Now, Toyota on the other hand, looks like they dropped the ball over night with the new Camry. And, how long has the Toyota been out? Under a year and they are already experiencing major problems, makes you wonder what kind of other quality issues will be surfacing later on. I'm looking at the current reality not the past. BTW VW actually did clean up it's act over night (2 years) while Toyota it seems has only gotten sloppier.

 

you hear 3-5 instances where a tranny goes out and you assume toyotas reliability sucks everywhere else, youre overreacting and toyota sells 40k+ of these a month. Domestic companies beat VW badly in reliability and sell many times more vehicles than VW does. Domestics have improved greatly, euro hasnt

 

I'll have to say that Toyota has been getting a little bit worse but considering how many vehicles are produced the percentage is very slim. At least Toyota announces their recalls even if it is a very minute issue, not to say a dead tranny is minute.
I would honestly go for the Avalon or maybe the Accord. I would stay away from the ES350 which is essentially the Camry. But it could just be bad luck, I honestly love the looks of the Camry. Find what you feel is the most comfortable for you.

 

try the avalon next, gigantic vehicle, rides very smooth also

 

dam what are the odds...good luck w/ the next attempt. personally if this happened twice to me...i would run away.

 

too bad Russ..my sisters 07' camry has not had any issues for its first 5k miles...with trips to vegas, yosemite, etc.

good luck with the lemon law!

 

What a coincidence........

 

rofl

and as far as i know the ES350 hasnt had any of the tranny issues encounterered by the first batch of camry's.

 

I believe after reading the ES350 section there have been reports by owners of similar issues with the tranny. It may or may not be the exact same problem, but it doesn't appear to be issue free.