The car has run pretty well overall, given its age. However, there's been a lot of rust underneath the car, resulting in multiple problems. Recently, I attempted to back the car out of the driveway but found I was unable to put it in reverse, and the gearshift had an unusual lack of resistance. Not only reverse, I couldn't put it in any gear, so I got it towed to a mechanic, who told me that the transmission cable had snapped some time between when I parked it and when I started it up again the next day. It cost $550 to fix, and then it wound up developing other problems related to the rust soon afterward. My advice is, if it starts showing problems on the underbelly related to rust, it's time to ditch the car.

I have a 2005 Rav4 with an automatic transmission and a few months ago the transmission started "slipping" it would delay changing gears then suddenly shift jerking the whole car. I took the car back to the dealer and they said the only solution was to replace the transmission at a cost of $4000. After checking with a couple other mechanics I was given the same diagnosis and cost quote. In the mean time my transmission has completely stopped working, I got in my car one day started it up and it just wouldn't go into any gear. I have hear this is a common problems with the 01-03 Rav4's, I beleive as the 05 get more milage on them their transmission will begin to fail to, I think Toyota needs to add them to thier list of many recalls.

I purchased a 2005 Toyota Rav4 in July of 2005, and have taken superb care of it over the years. However, the transmission blew up on me after just 89,000 miles. I was crossing a double set of railroad tracks when this happened, and it scared me half to death. It's costing me $3,000 to fix the transmission, and the guy at the garage couldn't even give me a reason for this happening. After some internet research, I found that this has been happening to numerous '01-'05 Rav4 customers that have reached just over 80,000 miles due to a faulty ECM that Toyota has decided NOT to recall. Now I need to pay another $1,200 to have the ECM replaced at the Toyota dealer so that this doesn't happen to me again. Absolutely ridiculous! How can they get away with something like this?