Avalon shows dent in Toyota quality

Thanks for the link. Toyota Avalon has had a free ride since 2001. Glad to see a poor quality reputation is finally catching up with the reality of owning one.

Thanks for the link. Toyota Avalon has had a free ride since 2001. Glad to see a poor quality reputation is finally catching up with the reality of owning one.

Have not read the story yet, but the Camry based Avalon is known for steering & suspension issues.

Rob

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The problems, while upsetting to a long-time Toyota owner, are significantly less serious than the average from GM, Chrysler, and Ford.And from my experience with Toyota, the problems WILL be fixed, both on the production line, and at the dealership.

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And you are basing this opinion on? I think this is the thing that bothers me most about Toyota owners. It seems that no matter how crappy their Toyota is, they claim everything else is worse. I suppose you have to do that if you pay two or three thousand more for a boring third rate design.

Ed

And you are basing this opinion on? I think this is the thing that bothers me most about Toyota owners. It seems that no matter how crappy their Toyota is, they claim everything else is worse. I suppose you have to do that if you pay two or three thousand more for a boring third rate design.

Ed

Last year I was shopping for a new pick-up. Initially I was primarily interested in a Tundra. I liked the size. I test drove three different Tundras. All three sounded like rock crushers when they were initially started. Two of the salesmen said it was perfectly normal and that they all did that. The third salesman more or less ignored my question. Now maybe the noise was not piston slap, but it sure sounded like piston slap, and it was worse than any GM vehicle I have personal experience with. Now maybe it wasn't a problem (it did clear up with in a 20 seconds in all three cases), but it certainly was not the sort of happy noise that you expect from a Toyota (at least based on all the BS you read about Toyotas). I also think it is unconscionable that Toyota still requires routine valve inspection / adjustment on many of their engines. In the end I bought a Nissan Frontier instead of a Toyota. This was primarily due to cost. With similar equipment, the Nissan was 3k less than a Toyota. So far the Nissan is fine.

Ed

Toyotas are nothing special in the JD Powers rating, yet Toyota owners constantly cite this as proof of Toyota superiority. You need to actually read the stuff you are citing. For instance, in the 2005 Initial Quality Study, Toyotas had 105 problems per 100 vehicles. Buicks only had 100. The industry average was 118. In the 2005 Vehicle Dependability Study, Toyotas had 194 problems per 100 vehicles, Bucks only 163. The industry average was

237. If you put so much faith in JD Powers results, you should be buying a Buick. I put no faith in Consumer Reports rankings. Their methodology is non-scientific. In recent years they have cleaned up the result to remove really horrible inconsistencies (like Buicks scoring much better than Oldsmobiles), however it is still a flawed survey. I just filled out my 2006 CR Survey. The amount of information they collected is insufficient to prove anything. Given the attitude of most Toyota owners it is not surprising that they do well in the Consumer Reports popularity survey.

Ed

I base it on spending 10 of the last 38 years working on Toyotas, having also owned a few, and having worked on and owned a LOT of non-toyotas in the other 28.

Are Toyotas perfect? Nope - first to admit that - but a lot less trouble than the Fords, GMs and Chryslers I've owned (and currently own) And unlike GM, it doesn't take Toyota 20 years to repair a problem at the manufacturing level like GM and Ford with their leaky intakes, bad trannies, etc.

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Another case of Toyota screwing their owners.

Ed

How is this screwing Toyota owners?

1. To me, it's good business. They have 90 out of 5800 vehicles reporting problems. That's about 2%. How many people get recall notices, never do anything, and never have problems? This isn't something that would strand you or cause harm. You can drive the car still and probably pretty well.
2. Toyota is known for its quality. This is not a common problem.

American manufacturers use lesser quality, then pay millions on the backend trying to fix it all.

BTW, I own a Ford product, but I think this is smart business.

baldguy13

-not adverse to Toyota

Ed White wrote:

"baldguy13" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

unbelieable... an 'on topic' post to alt.autos.ford !!

Everyone here knows my 2001 Avalon was a piece of crap in my opinion. Notwithstanding, my father's L300 Saturn Wagon was off the charts bad. A 6 cylinder that sucked gas but had no power and incredibly noisy cooling/ac fans. Horrible steering, and the hood lever felt it would break off in your hands when you tried to open the hood. I don't believe any Toyota is as bad as the 2004 L300 Wagon. Unfortunately he needed a small wagon for his walker and there were few choices on the market.

I don't remember my 2001 Avalon requiring valve adjustments. My 83 Tercels did it but the dealer never did it and performance suffered until I had it done elsewhere.