5th & 6th Generation (2002-2006 & 2007-2011)Toyota Camry Discussion for years: 2002-2006 & 2007-2011
Topics of discussion range from fuel economy, safety, modifications, performance all involving America's favorite family car, the Toyota Camry.
4/1/06
Took car in to dealer for the first time to have transmission checked since it was having a hard time downshifting and banging gears, I was very upset that I had to take car in after only driving the car 3 times.
I was told to come back on 4-3-06.
4/3/06
Took car in to have the following concerns checked out: transmission, radio reception and grill corner sticking out on one side. I went on a test drive w/ the shop foreman and he told me they had the same problem w/ 2 other Camry and they had to replace the shift solenoids in the transmission. I was told to take my car and that they would call me as soon as they got the transmission solenoids in.
4/5/06
I got a call telling me the shift solenoids are in.
4/6/06
Took car in, The guy who took care of me was not helpful at all, I reminded him about the radio reception problem and he told me the mechanic was not able to duplicate my concern when he told me that he would check it out once I brought the car back, I also asked him what kind of MPG I was supposed to be getting and he told me “ I don’t know… you have to go and asked one of the salesman…..”
I was put on a rental car, and after work and pick up car the same day, the transmission was not banging gears anymore, but did not feel right... I was driving the car very easy since I wanted to make sure I broke it in correctly and I can only get about 19 mpg w/ about 30-40 % hwy driving. Note: this is the first time I got an invoice from the dealership.
5/11/06
Called Toyota customer line 1800-GO-TOYOTA (1-800-46-869682) spoke to Thomas, told him that I am very unhappy and disappointed w/ the car, the transmission is still not shifting properly and I am getting very poor gas mileage even w/ me driving the car very easy to break it in. I told him I did not buy a new car to have to be taking it in to be repair so much.
5/13/06
I was driving the car and come to an intersection where the other street has the right of way, there was a car coming but I had more than enough room… I proceeded to give the car gas but the car was not going it seam like slow motion, it felt like the transmission was slipping or not engaging, I gave it more gas, the RPMs shot up and at the last second the car moved forward, the other car almost t-boned me on the drivers side, because my car would not go. I felt like that is it, this car is going to cause me to get involve in an accident.
5/16/06
I get a call from Toyota asking me to take the car in, so that they can try to fix it.
5/18/06
I took car in to dealer, went on a test drive w/ foreman, and was put on a rental car, I was told I would get a call by 12:00, I never got the call,
5/19/06
Stopped by dealer to check on my car before going in to work, I was told by the service manager that they were waiting on the engineer from Toyota to take a look at my car.
I stopped by dealer after work and was told that the engineer reprogrammed the computer w/ the latest program and that the computer had to relearn how I drive. Note: the rental car I had was a 06 Camry w/ about 9k miles, I drove the car hard and it never once hesitated like my car, it even felt faster and I was confident when I had to merge on traffic.
5/30/06
Called the Toyota customer service experience dept, at 1800-331-4331 I was told by Jack that my case manager June, would give me a call w/in two days… I never got the call.
6/2/06
Called Toyota again I spoke to Autumn, I wanted to speak to one of the supervisor, I was told by her that she could not transfer me to anyone else, she told me she will have supervisor call me back w/in one business day, I told her I did not get a call back before, she stated there was nothing she could do.
6/5/06
I was driving to work and I was on a side street and had to make a left on to a main street, there was a lot of traffic and I went up to the median and waited for an opening so that I could merge on to the main street, when I saw an opening I went for it I got onto the main street and gave the car gas and the car did not go, the transmission was slipping, I floor it and the car is still not going then it feels like it caches on and starts to go, but I can see the car behind me coming w/ the flow of traffic, I saw how the nose on the car went down a lot and got really close to the rear of my car, if that person would not have been paying attention, he would have slam into me. Note: I did not cut that person off, I waited until there was a good space so that I could merge but the transmission was just not catching on.
6/6/06
I took the car in to the dealer again, told them what happen to me and they told me they would check out the car. I was put on a rental car, which was a 06 Camry. This car had a little over 10k miles w/ an I4 eng, the transmission feels completely different and it never hesitated or hunt for the correct gear.
After work I went to dealer to check status on my car I was told the big mngrs from the dealer were talking about my car saying that it was going to be a problem, I was also told that they test drove the car and were unable to duplicate the transmission problem. I was told they would get back to me the next day.
6/7/06
I still had not receive a call back from Toyota customer experience dept, I called them again and was told by John that they had send me the paper work to feel out, and that it would then go to arbitration, which would take about 40 days. Then depending on the outcome Toyota would do what arbitration decides.
10:46am Called Toyota again, spoke to Jay, I requested to speak to a supervisor since I had not gotten a call back, Jay just kept telling me that I could not speak to anyone else and hang up on me, after I requested to speak to a supervisor several times. It got me even more upset...
10:53am Called Toyota again and spoke to Jane, she just told me the same thing that I could not speak to anyone else and that I would have to wait for a phone call from them, I never got the call…
3:30 pm Place call to dealership to get status on my car, after being placed on hold for a while I was told that a couple of people had test driven my car and that they were unable to find anything wrong w/ it. I asked him , so why am I getting such bad gas mileage, he put me on hold again and then came back to the phone and told me that I have to codes in my car and that they can’t find anything wrong w/ it. I told him the car did not have any codes when I first brought the car in and they had to replace the shift solenoids, and he did not know how to answer me.
6/7/06
I went to dealership to pick up car after work and the person I had spoken to was not there anymore, I spoke w/ “JC” and Norman, I was told that they could not find anything wrong w/ the car and JC did not know anything about the paperwork for my car, I explain to both of them again what is going on w/ my car and Norman and JC were very helpful and stated they would check out the car the next day. I went to see where they had my car parked and someone had put a cardboard box on top of my hood that was about 5 feet long and the drivers window was half way down, as some of you know, it rains very frequently here is Fl, I went and spoke to JC and he apologizes for it.
The same day I saw another customer that brought their 07 Camry V6 and I asked him what kind of gas mileage he was getting, he told me he drives the car fast and gets about 23-24 mpg on the city and 27-28 mpg on the hwy, he told me he had taken his car to over 110 mph, I told him my car is only giving me about 18-19 mpg in the city and at must is 23mpg w/ mostly hwy driving. He told me there is definitely something wrong w/ your car.
On the same day I went and spoke to the Director of sales and told him the problems I am having w/ my car, he offer to put me on another car by having me trade my car in, I told him I did not want to loose thousands of dollars because I got a car that is not working right. He said that I would have to deal w/ Toyota directly and he also suggested that I speak to the manager of off the service and body shop departments; I was given the name Don C. and was told to call him the next day to see if he could help me out.
6/8/06
I called Don C and spoke to his secretary; I was told that he would call me back in about 15min… I never got the phone call.
I called the dealership at 5:00pm to get status on my car, I was told they were not able to find anything wrong w/ car, and was told to call back at 6:00 to see if they found out anything else.
I called back at 6:05 and was told they did not find anything w/ it and that they had open up a case and were going to try to get an engineer from Toyota to help check out the problem.
After work I went to dealership on Colonial drive to pick up my car, I checked the mpg on the rental car to compare to mine and I got 31.53 mpg now that is what I am supposed to be getting on mine.
I had to take the car to the dealership even before I put gas on it for the first time, I am extremely disappointed since I purchase the car to have something reliable and good on gas that I won’t have to be taking in to get repair. When I purchase the car I was planning on keeping the car for a long… not anymore.
The car has not been reliable or good in gas, and to make it worse, Toyota wont even return my phone calls,
I am very disappointed w/ the car but I am even more disappointed w/ the lack of customer service from a company like Toyota.
why do people sign up just to bitch about something?
If a room full of toyota mechanics cannot duplicate the problem, then there just might not be one.
Get a friend (who is somewhat mechanically inclined) to borrow the car for a couple of days to see if they can find a problem.
Come on now.. that's not fair, he probably got a bad one out of the batch. Problems with the car can appear at the wrong times... and maybe it's just not popping up for them. I don't know the procedure to get a car replaced. Maybe it's a shitty dealership.. who knows. But I haven't heard much problems fromt he 07s .. at least not like this
__________________
January 6, 2007
Lexus officially announced that they arent f***ing around anymore
"We aint f***in' around anymore." - Lexus Employee
I would take it to another dealer all together. This is why I have AAA gold. If I have to tow my car for any reason I get a 100 miles free.
If you car is in too bad of shape to drive...then tow it to another dealer. Get another opinion. No way would I allow anyone to be rude to me. however, I have no idea how you handled yourself with this dealer. If you came off all ticked off then I can understand why they are not being very helpful.
It is not what you say...it is how you say it...
__________________ "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."Albert Einstein
Let me give you a little bit of my back ground:
I have over 3 yrs of experience as a mechanical breakdown adjuster for an insurance company and I also have over 1 yr experiece as a Insurance adjuster for a major auto insurance company.
The way some people are w/ sports I am w/ cars, I have replaced engines, transmissions, swapped brakes, done head gaskets, timing belts, water pumps, I have also installed a turbo system on a naturally aspirated car and drove it over 24k miles w/ out problem and getting better gas mileage than when it was stock.
The people that know me know that I am pretty "familiar" w/ cars.
I did have a friend of mine who is a certified mechanic drive my car and he also felt the hesitation.
I did not sign up to bitch, I wrote what I did because if I would have known that other people were having this problem, I would not have gotten the car.
Old Dood
I know exactly what you mean, I spoke w/ the Service manager and explain to him my concern, I was not rude at all, I did let him know that I was very disapointed w/ the problems I am having w/ the car.
I know one can get more bees w/ honey....
The dealership has not been rude, the one who hang up on me was Toyota's cust experience departmet.
Let me give you a little bit of my back ground:
I have over 3 yrs of experience as a mechanical breakdown adjuster for an insurance company and I also have over 1 yr experiece as a Insurance adjuster for a major auto insurance company.
The way some people are w/ sports I am w/ cars, I have replaced engines, transmissions, swapped brakes, done head gaskets, timing belts, water pumps, I have also installed a turbo system on a naturally aspirated car and drove it over 24k miles w/ out problem and getting better gas mileage than when it was stock.
The people that know me know that I am pretty "familiar" w/ cars.
I did have a friend of mine who is a certified mechanic drive my car and he also felt the hesitation.
I did not sign up to bitch, I wrote what I did because if I would have known that other people were having this problem, I would not have gotten the car.
my apologies - jumped the gun on that one, whoops!
That sucks. I don't think your post would ever make me not purchase a new Camry because I don't think your problems in this situation are typical. But it's good you are documenting so well (for legal reasons) and sharing your experience.
In my opinion, there are probably always going to be a mechanical issues with a small batch of ALL new cars. But this car should have been considered DANGEROUS and if they were looking after their own butts, they would have made more steps to ensure that you and the car was better taken care of. I think they should have given you a replacement by now.
Hope this somehow works out for you and you stay safe.
The people that know me know that I am pretty "familiar" w/ cars.
I did have a friend of mine who is a certified mechanic drive my car and he also felt the hesitation.
Well, I would disagree with some of the other folks above -- it sounds to me like your car has "throttle by wire" (as all of the new Camrys do), and your car is operating entirely normally compared to all of the cars the rest of us have. Then, it sounds like you've "made a federal case out of it, and them some," instead of driving the car and either getting used to how throttle by wire responds to your inputs, and/or allowing the transmission to adapt to your driving style. "Only drove it on weekends," eh?
I'd agree with your dealer that there's probably nothing wrong whatsoever with your transmission. Check out our "hesitation" thread, if you have't already. Sure, sure, OK, all right, you know a lot about cars. So does your certified mechanic. The bottom line is that the computer-controlled throttle and the computer-controlled tranmission don't respond quite like the mechanical systems you and your mechanic are probably used to operating. That's not necessarily a "problem," and you can try to get a thousand new transmission replacements, but this is how they normally operate.
To restate what I've already described in the recent "hesitation" thread, any kind of "hesitation" issue has totally disappeared with my car -- either I've learned how to operate the vehicle in order to get it to respond the way I expect it to, or its adaptive transmission has "adapted" to me well enough to operate the way I expect it to.
I would recommend that you simply go out and drive your car. Give it a three months and then see if your "problems" have simply withered away after that time. And, if you're finding yourself so frequently in situations where you've got to essentially "punch it in panic mode," well, I tend to think that most of those kinds of situations can be avoided. Sure, there are true "panic situations," but if that's the kind of thing you're routinely doing just to move about in traffic, well, just give that some extra thought.
Probably not quite the sympathy you expected to get from a bunch of fellow forum folks? Well, it's simply the fact that, "Yep, that's what our cars have done, too." But we're starting to learn how our cars' computer systems work, and we're finding that our hesitation issues are going away, again, as we have either simply learned how to operate the throttle in order to get the response we expect, and/or the adaptive transmisson has indeed adapted to our driving styles. It sure sounds to me like that's one thing you haven't given yourself -- and your car -- a chance to do. So, that's the solution I would recommend -- drive the car. And if you're only going to drive it "on the weekends," well, then count about 15 weekends = one month. But drive the car for "three months," and see if you and your car can't just learn how to work together to your best benefit. Or, just bail out of the thing as best you can, and find something else -- but just make sure it doesn't have "thottle by wire." Again, I think your dealer is very much telling you the truth -- this is a different technology compared to the old mechanical systems, and the transmission probably is working entirely normally, in conjunction with the throttle-by-wire system.
Without quoting all of your post thoots...I still say take it to another dealer and get a second opinion. Allot of these dealership mechanics are not that well versed on the 07 Camry yet.
__________________ "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."Albert Einstein
Without quoting all of your post thoots...I still say take it to another dealer and get a second opinion. Allot of these dealership mechanics are not that well versed on the 07 Camry yet.
Oh, not disagreed with you about that at all -- indeed, looks like the guy has worn out his welcome to a significant degree with the current dealer. Still, I don't think anything described is any different than what we've described in our "hesitation" thread -- that's how the thing works. "Relax, you'll get used to it." And life goes on.....
True...thoots. that makes perfect sense....I only suggest trying another dealer for his own peace of mind. My 07 Le has 3600 miles on it and it is "settling down" more. I notice it allot because I switch between the Buick Park Ave and the Camry all the time. If it is raining and I just washed the Camry...well..I take the Buick. Since I hit over 3500 miles recently....I am going to drive my Buick this week to work (140 miles round trip). Slow down the mileage on the new Camry.... But between the 4 speed Buick and the 5 speed Camry...I can tell the difference allot. The Buick is still butter smooth compaired to the Camry.
Silly thing is...I bought the damn Camry so I would have a good gas mileage car to drive everyday. Now I don't want to add too many miles on it...*sigh* My thinking is the buick only has 80K on it (2000) and I figure it will last up to 300K easily. So I will drive that more now. It is pulling 28-30 mpg since I had some pre-vent engine work on it done.
Got to love the old style 3800 Series II GM engine. Closest thing to bulletproof in GM's engine line up...
__________________ "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."Albert Einstein
We had a constant popping noise in my wifes brand new 2003 Accord (which was a new model year). After the dealer looked at it several times and heard it themselves but couldn't fix they started saying they didn't hear the problem. I even had all the receipts from the first repairs where the problem was confirmed. After 5 attempts I started to pursue a buyback from the corp. office. They flew an engineer out from FL I believe and he fixed the car in 15 minutes. Turns out they started having several cases of it and the engineer came out knowing what was likely wrong with the car. He was exactly right. Never happened again.
For all we know this car might be falling flat on it's face when trying to take off from a stop from time to time and it may be a different problem than "hesitation". My 02 Maxima was drive by wire and the thing was a rocket. It isn't just "part of it" to hesitate. I guarantee there will be a dozen updates to the ECU in the next year for this car.
This is what I hate about buying a new body style....
I owned about 30 cars already and if a car hesitated for any reason I would take it in for a repair. Now I own the 07 4 cylinder auto trans Camry and I don't feel any hesitation from it at any time but I only have 200 miles on it . Either it learned real fast how I drive or any hesitation is just not normal .
Just my 2 cents .
tooths
"it sounds to me like your car has "throttle by wire" (as all of the new Camrys do), and your car is operating entirely normally compared to all of the cars the rest of us have. Then, it sounds like you've "made a federal case out of it, and them some," instead of driving the car and either getting used to how throttle by wire responds to your inputs, and/or allowing the transmission to adapt to your driving style. "Only drove it on weekends," eh?"
Have you had any work done to you trans ?
I did, they had to replaced the shift solenoids, because it was not working properly, and how do you know that my car is doing exactly what yours did?
Did your car feel like when driving a standard transmission and the clutch was just sliping and not grabing?
About making it a "federal case out of it and them some".... not jet...
About getting used to the throtle by wire, I have driven many kinds of cars including many w/ throttle by wire, the 2 last rental cars I had for about 5 days were 06 Camry and I believe they have it, and there was no hesitation whatsoever on them compare to what my car feels like.
The reason I stated that I was driving the car on weekends is because I have started to drive it to work daily.
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My experience w/ a 07 Camry SE I4 auto
But I haven't heard much problems fromt he 07s .. at least not like this
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