This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.
So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.
The contact owns a 2005 Toyota Avalon. While driving at approximately 4 mph, the vehicle began to independently change gears and jerk violently. The contact took the vehicle to the dealer for unrelated maintenance and advised the dealer of the failure. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired for the failure. The failure persisted and became progressively worse. He contacted the dealer and secured an appointment for diagnostic testing and possible repairs. The VIN was not available. The failure mileage was 600 and the current mileage was 21,500.
Our 2005 Toyota Avalon was serviced for safety recall on 3/1/10 and gas pedal feel became more sensitive immediately afterwards. On 3/2/10 while driving in rain the ABS system activated several times during normal application of the brakes. This was alarming and very disconcerting. Subsequent driving later this week did not effect a repeat of the ABS concerns. However, there is an occasional slight surge in speed which seems to relate to the transmission shift points which did happen before the recall service.
My 2005 Toyota Avalon with the 2gr-fe V6 engine revs high, even when it's warmed up. In traffic, many times it revs high and lunges forward. Several times I braked hard to avoid read ending the car in front of me. This has been ongoing since I bought the car in 2005 as I am the original owner. I've taken it in to Toyota service and the mechanics found nothing. Once I showed them a technical service bulletin from Toyota which stated the exhaust manifold, oxygen sensors needed replacement and the ECM needed to be reprogrammed. It worked for a year (2007) then back to the same problem, high revving of the engine, hard shifting and lunging forward or reverse. The latest incident was today, 12/7/09 where I almost hit a pedestrian since the car revved high and lunged into the crosswalk. I had to press the brakes hard to prevent hitting the pedestrian.
I was parking my car at work. I pulled into the parking space and backed up slightly to straighten my car. When I put the car into drive to pull forward again, the car raced forward with engine revving strongly. I could not stop the car with the brake. The car crashed and pushed through a thick brick wall. The airbags did not deploy. The car would only stop after I pushed the engine shutoff button. The gearshift was hard to move after the incident.
Since purchasing in Dec., 2005, transmission hesitates when proceeding from idle at slow speeds and sometimes between gears at highway speed when trying to accelerate. Have nearly been rear-ended innumerable times. Original several complaints to dealer resulted in info that "no tsb has been issued to fix that". this last time I complained, I was told that it was natural feature of drive-by-wire, that no tsb had been issued which fixed it, and that Toyota was not going to do anything about this known problem.
- on 9/24/06 while the contact was driving vehicle at 60 mph and it unexpectedly accelerated to 75 mph. The contact had to apply the brake with both feet to disengage the acceleration on the vehicle. On 10/09/06, while driving on the highway at 40 mph the vehicle accelerated to 75 mph, had to hold both feet on the brake and pull the vehicle off to side of the road. At that point the contact took the vehicle to the dealership, ) and the dealer stated that the gas pedal was most likely getting caught under the carpet. The dealer couldn't find anything wrong with the vehicle. While driving on 12/23/06 at 35 mph the vehicle accelerated to 75 mph, after a quarter of a mile contact was able to stop the vehicle by outing both feet on brake. All the brakes were smoking and there was transmission fluid leaking. At that point, contact had the vehicle towed to rosener Toyota. Updated 01/29/07.
Transmission lags then jumps forward, transmission slips at low speeds never seems to find a gear. Steering at speeds below 40 will jerk left or right depending on the road.(scares you to death) brakes have grabbed and jerked the car from day one the dealership ground the rotors to fix this but it has not resolved the problem. The car has had the power steering hose replaced because it leaked and it still does. The cd player skip while your parked, the steering wheel needed to be replaced. We have had this car in to the dealer 5 times with none of the problems to the brakes, transmission, or steering resolved.
I have filed a complaint with Toyota regarding the hesitation and erratic shifting of our 2005 Avalon. I was told that it was due to the way the computer controls the new 5 speed transmission in conjunction with their electronic fuel injection control. In researching this problem, I have read where many other Avalon owners have also experienced this. On sun.,03/12/06, I had just exited route 80 eastbound (exit 27) in N.J. and proceeded to merge with traffic on route 206 and had to immediately make a left turn. As I pressed on accelerator, the vehicle simply did not respond (hesitation) and, when it did engage after a second or two, lunged forward. This startled all in the car (myself and 2 passengers) and was a very unsafe occurrence as traffic was heavy and moving fast. The vehicle has approx. 7500 miles on it and will be a year old in June,2006. I have an appointment for service with my dealership on tues.,03/21. They are to go over the car and check to see if there are any tech. Service bulletins. I have been checking on existence of tsb since shortly after buying the vehicle. I am not optimistic. This is a serious problem and Toyota should be doing something about it! thank you.
The consumer complained about an automatic transmission problem. When applying pressure to the accelerator pedal the gear would not engage. The vehicle did not shift gears smoothly. The consumer suspected that there was a problem with the vehicle speed control. The consumer lost control of the vehicle when another vehicle passed. The dealership informed the consumer that they could not do anything because the vehicle was computer controlled. (12/01/05)
I have a 2005 Toyota Avalon purchased new in April,2005.I also have an earlier complaint, ODI#10119869, regarding having to re sauder radio speaker wires, replacing the bushings and lower sub frame, as well as air conditoning, steering, and radio problems all occurring in the first 33 miles of owning the new car.I accidentally filed it under a Toyota Scion for Toyota Corp. Please see that compliant also.. this complaint is about the transmission. It seems to not want to get out of first gear.getting onto the the freeway is terrible, as well as driving in slow traffic. I have taken it into the dublin Toyota dealership and they said there is nothing wrong, it's just that the sensory computer in the car knows how I drive and the gears follow my driving habits. They said they reset it, that maybe when the car was test driven, it set itself to another driver. They said to drive it easy for the first 50 miles, then normally after that. Well, before I even drove off thier lot, it stuck again-but I had to go to work so I called them as soon as I got to work and have to take it back in again. The real safety issue occurred yesterday, when I was the first car waiting at a train crossing for about 3 minutes while the train was passing. Afetr it passed, as I was crossing the tracks, it took about 15 seconds for the car to move, again stuck and reving in low gear!I have almost been rear ended on freeway entrances, red lights turning to green, andnd numerours other times, and now on train tracks!!!!something has to be done- I also have compliined to the dealership about noises when steering and they said it is just the release of the brakes.since I cannnot duplicate it, they say there is nothing I can do- it is not the brakes because it happens when I am making sharp turns.
I just purchased 2005 Toyota Avalon limited. I experience terrible transmission hesitation/slippage. It is getting dangerous when I have to enter highway ramp because of transmission hesitation.when I coast at low speed, for example, I notice a red traffic light ahead and take my foot off the gas, the car then continues forward as if in gear and after a period of time it feels as if the transmission shifts to neutral, the rpms drop to below 1,000. Then the traffic light changes when my speed is about 5 - 10 mph and I slowly depress the accelerator. The engine rpms increase about 300 - 500 rpms but there is no acceleration. Then the transmission gets the message and we start to accelerate.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
- Dewey, AZ, USA