jbl-1985

OK well I am going to catch a lot of crap for this but I am going to post it anyway.

Ever since I joined back in August of '09 (I think that's when it was) I started taking note of what cars were parked in the parking lot of the local Aamco shop that I pass every day and not once have I seen any Lexus product.

Let the abuse begin...

hypervish

A Lexus is a Toyota after-all, so why would it be in a shop?? LoL.
I'm a firm believer in Toyota, as well as any other Jap. auto maker. They've always been the most reliable, even with all of these recalls, they blow all other domestic and foreign cars out of the water.

I think your "study" is quite practical... people only want to see with their eye's they don't care about the facts.

For Example: If every one toyota out of 1 million, had a problem, domestic lovers would jump on toyota, but when every frickin' dodge (or any domestic car for that matter) out there is blowing their tranny, and throwing ball joints left and right, no one gives, and they just say it's normal maintenance....yeah right.

When Toyota started making recalls, the entire news media made them sound like criminals, it's all dirty work. They are just trying to increase sales of domestic cars. Now, that there have been no real issues found, nobody say's a word...

jbl-1985

A resounding "me too". The problem is you get on these and other boards and you hear all of the horror stories and at some point, at least for me, you feel like sometimes your car is eventually doomed. But I get past that as you can't worry about stuff like that all the time.

I firmly believed there was no issue with the "Gas Pedal" sticking problem that was once believed to be a huge problem, only to turn out that people shouldn't have mutliple floor mats in their cars.

While Toyota was going through it's problems, GM also came out with at least one or two significant recalls, but no, they were not covered by the media like the Toyota recalls and you can draw your own conclusion on why that might have happened.

I have gotten a few fixes in the mail for my prius and RX330 that are not safety recalls, but just things that need to be fixed...Maybe GM and Ford are doing this, but I have never gotten anything like that from GM for my Saturn, and believe me, if you want to hear about problems, I'll tell you about THAT car...

They may not be perfect, but Toyota is still my brand.

AlexusAnja

So true. Everyone and their grandmother that got into an accident was reported when it was going bad. Then when the recent joint study with NASA was released and it was shown not to be an electrical issue it was just almost an aside news that said "oh yeah, by the way, the Toyota issue was not electrical... and other news..."

Hey, if you don't practice common sense and put like three floor mats over each other... ****** is gonna jam up. There probably was a faulty design, but coupled with bad use and it just made things even worse.

LA4Mead

I do take my 99 RX300 to a local transmission shop (not AAMCO)... For preventive maint while this (newer design, 2004) tranny has had clean filters and pink fluid, and slick, appropriate firm shifts. The original, replaced with factory new (not rebuilt) under warrantee by Lexus, was problematic right from the start. At first, they denied there was a problem. But by the third tranny service just before 70,000, a Toyota dealer found metal in the pan with the burned fluid. When I reported back at the Lexus dealer at that point Lexus did not hesitate, and offered to replace the transmission with one of updated design under warrantee. The new one has been great and does not "burn" the fluid like the crappy, original did.

The experience might have been a different story if I had another brand with a tranny problem... Can you say "Windstar", "Jeep" "Audi" or even "Matrix"? Lexus stood behind their product during the standard 70,000 mile warrantee.

In pursuit of perfection, my RX has fallen short. They definately cut some corners. But I still consider it pretty reliable with proper caution which should be afforded to the maint of any car, especially one that's 13 years old.

sktn77a

iTrader: (2)

So, what is this "new" design (2004) transmission you are referring to?

sktn77a

iTrader: (2)

No abuse here! But, as you say, your observation is limited by a small sample size. If you divide the number of transmission failures in the RX300 by the number of transmission shops in the nation, you will get a number very much less than 1. So most people using your empirical method will get the same result. Added to that, I think, is that most people with transmission problems in an RX300 will take it back to Lexus, where all of the cars that are being worked on are inside.

(Ah, the curse of being a scientist!)