I think you're right, Graybeard!
It's too bad the ES, which is a nicely dolled-up Toyota Camry with leather seats, has this type of poor piston-bore clearance production line issues. Powertrain has not been Toyota's strength unfortunately.
See if BMW will give you sufficient trade-in value for your junk ES. BTW, "The BMW Group in the U.S. (BMW and MINI combined) today reported April vehicle sales of 31,448, an increase of 9.6 percent from the
28,692 vehicles sold in the same month of 2007." And I thought the the Euro is strong against the US dollar.