About a month ago when driving back from a camping trip the vehicle check engine light came on and car went into limp mode on the freeway with my daughter, girlfriend, and dog in the car. I pulled the car over to the side of the road, a dangerous ordeal in itself, and scanned the car. The errors available at that time were connection errors, so I cleared it and continue driving back home with no further issues.

After about a month the car's check engine light came on again, along with all the other warning lights like last time, and it went into limp mode on the freeway with no prior warning. Again, avoiding traffic from colliding into me, I limped to the shoulder. This time the car gave me the error code P0A078, inverter fault. I cleared that one to drive it to a parking lot and had the car towed to the nearest Lexus dealership for $139.

A technician there inspected the vehicle and found that the transmission was totally disintegrated. He determined this by inspecting the transmission fluid, it was a milky grey/black with lots of metal fragments in it. I told him that I had recently gotten my transmission fluid changed less than 3K miles ago at a Toyota specialist and they had said at that time the old fluid had indicated little to no wear, it was clean with no metal in it when they changed it.

I had the technician give me a sample to take to get analyzed and asked him to verify the transmission fluid level was adequate. He said the level was correct and I'm in the process of analyzing the fluid to make sure the previous shop put in the correct type of transmission fluid (as of date 7/23/21).

The total cost to replace the transmission was quoted at $7900 - no typo there! Ouch! I had bought my Lexus thinking that it had the same drivetrain quality of other Lexus and Toyota cars. However, the shop is telling me that it's not unusual or suspicious for a transmission to go out at 200,000 miles? If that's the case, I should just buy cheaper brands because that's typically their longevity while Toyotas are known to reliably last 300-400k.

The car has been very well maintained and driven very conservatively by me and the previous owner. I and the previous owner always have garaged it and adhered to all the required maintenance at or before the intervals. Anyone looking at the car from the outside or under the hood would not guess that the car has 227k miles on it, she's beautiful! There was no indication that the transmission was going to fail before it did so it's my belief that something within the transmission came loose and wrecked havoc within the part. Given that's likely the case it's my belief I'm dealing with a manufacturing defect that the dealership should at least take responsibility for some of the cost for replacement. If the transmission had gone out due to normal wear and tear there would have been some notable metal fragments and discoloration of transmission fluid when it was last changed - not the case!

If the oil analysis comes back as the correct oil, I will be escalating the matter to the dealership and demanding them to at least pay part of the cost for replacement. If not, I will notify consumer reports and be contacting an attorney.