By accessing this website, you acknowledge that Edmunds and its third party business partners may use cookies, pixels, and similar technologies to collect information about you and your interactions with the website as described in our
Privacy Statement, and you agree that your use of the website is subject to our
Visitor Agreement.
Comments
what is so odd today is that when people were reporting issues, there were people contributing to the forums which were eventually closed that were asserting there was no problem with the vehicles.
haven't seen posts by them in a long long time.
in any case people may have forgotten or just not known, the hesitation, shifting vagueness, and downshifting issues didn't start with the DBW implementation in the '07 Camry.
i was meaning to ask - has your aggressive downshifting issue gone away, or are you just getting used to it so it is perceptively not an issue for you anymore?
Good question user777. When I first got my Camry, I noticed when I got off the gas and began to coast, the transmission would downshift (some people may refer to this as upshifting) which is pretty normal, only I thought it was fairly aggressive engine breaking compared to every car including Toyota/Lexus products I have/still own. However, after a good period of time, I began to notice it less and less... so it could very well be a perception thing. However, after I had the TSB applied, if I think about it while driving, I realise that I don't notice it at all anymore... not that it really was a "problem" to begin with. Now, whether, the aggressive downshifting was "fixed" via TSB, the tranny "learned" my driving style, or was just part of it being a new tranny.... I don't really know. But, I had, and continue to enjoy this car. I don't really drive my Boxter or RX very much anymore.
http://www.fitzmall.com/carfind/resultsb.asp?Search=NEW&ID=7U06F799*O&photo=TO07- 2532&loc=LFT&mall=GA&year=2007&mk_code=TO
It's based on what each region perceives it's 'market to want'. Notice when you go on to 'your' Toyota website to configure a vehicle it asks for your ZIP code. Put in a Fla ZIP and then do the configure process. Or an IL ZIP.
If you really want a basic LE 4c with VS and your region is not generally offering this then it's up to the local dealer to go to work on your behalf to look for one out of region or to order you one. If they want your business they will do it.
They have 114 Camrys in stock or inbound.
now - at the point there is a risk of lugging, then i would expect the AT to downshift.
i really don't think the AT is operating properly if you get off the gas and almost immediately it downshifts. this was something i wanted to get back to you on based on a previous post of yours.
so maybe the TSB has addressed that as well, which would be a good thing. i think it was you that mentioned your fuel economy improved following the TSB, so that would be a double-win for owners (smoothness and FE).
Thank you for your replies and help. I'm sorry to hear that you have also experienced some of the same problems with your Camry's that I have. But at least now I know that some of these problems are being experienced by others, and that they can hopefully be fixed. I will ask the service department at my dealership about any TSBs for the problems I'm having with my Camry. Do you know if there is a website somewhere where they are all listed?
Thanks again.
Roman
All autos have their problems including the Camry but the sales and track record overall are what separates the good cars from the bad cars. The Aura is just another 4 door sedan in the mix of all the other ho hum cars. The Camry and soon to be released 08 Accord, and 07 Altima separate the men from the boys. Go test drive one of these 3 and I would hope you have different view point.
At least they don't charge extra for it.
Your dealer can turn off both the drivers and passenger seat belt warning alerts. It is a customizable parameter.
What I really don't know, is whether a new build from the factory with the TSB applied would also have that sticker (which supposedly is your situation).....or, whether the sticker is only added if a TSB is added to the VIN# after production.
maybe they could re-apply it.
These transmission problems are exactly why I will never buy another car with an automatic transmission. Except for maybe replacing the clutch once in the lifetime of the car, you rarely will have problems with the manual. I couldn't be happier with my 5 speed manual SE . It certainly gives, what is an under powered car, a little more power to work with and makes it more fun to drive. The transmission is very each to shift and the clutch isnt bad either. I would certainly recomend the manual if you like to drive. The only thing is that its only available in the 4 cyl.
Good luck!
I had the TSB performed last week and there is a significant improvement in the car's performance. It also seems that my gas mileage is much better too! To bad Toyota hasn't informed the customers of this problem. Maybe, a class action, will get them moving. Toyota nonsence in '02 made me switch to Acura; don't get mad, get even. AS you can see I was forgiving but I won't be forgiving when it comes to my next car.
In light the gas crunch, maybe they should offer incentives to reimburse customers for their wasted fuel before the fix is applied!
I was seriously considering the new RAV4 as a 4-down TOAD and then I discovered the stick shift had been dropped. I think we are beginning to see a lot of that, fewer stick shift options, with FWD and front torque biased AWD vehicles.
On one hand some customers report that the dealers tell them the problem is caused by a computer error in the new drive by wire design, which can be fixed by using a new computer chip or new program download. That means Toyota admits that there is a problem.
On the other hand some customers report that the dealers tell them the acceleration hesitation is normal. They claim there is nothing wrong with the transmission and they refuse to do anything to help the complaining customers.
One post on an auto website even put forward the ridiculous claim that the 2007 Camry is so “advanced” that it takes time for the car to learn the driving habit of the owner.
I am not a mechanic, so I am not sure about the cause of the problem of acceleration hesitation in the 2007 V4 Camry. But as a professional driver, I can say for sure that the acceleration hesitation is so severe that it is a pain in the neck when you try as hard as possible to speed up to merge into the freeway traffic if you already know about the problem. What if you don’t know about the problem when you try to merge into the freeway in a new 2007 V4 Camry? I survive to tell everybody that there really is a problem with the 2007 V4 Camry and that Toyota must solve as soon as possible.
After a barrage of complaints against the 2007 Camry on another auto website, lately there is a sudden surge of Too-Good-To-Be-True reviews lauding the 2007 Camry. The irony is that the higher the rating the Too-Good-To-Be-True reviews give to the 2007 Camry, the lower the percentage of readers found the review helpful. The credibility of those 4 or 5 star reviews are just abysmal. Obviously, the readers of auto websites are far more intelligent than the people with their own agenda estimate them to be. One blogger is even ignorant enough to put the blame on the customers by saying that they should have test drive both the V4 and V6 and bought the V6 instead if they found a problem with the V4. First of all the problem is not that obvious unless you test-drive on the freeway. If a customer does take the risk to test drive the V4 on the freeway, he might have to buy a damaged V4, not the V6. And a conscientious company would only put the blame on itself for producing an inferior product instead of putting the blame on the customers. Not taking responsibility is a major reason why the quality of the products of a company starts to deteriorate.
In the past if something like this happens in a Japanese company, the employees responsible would either be fired or resigns in disgrace. Now what Toyota does is to just to cover it up and pretend that there is no problem.
If Toyota refuses to help the customers to solve the problem of its product, I fully support mcseri’s proposal that a class action lawsuit be brought against Toyota by the complaining customers.
Class Action Lawsuit or Recall.
Toyota administrators. It is time you chose one.
I have a '95 Camry and was ready to buy an '07.
That is, until I heard that the top executives of Toyota publicly apologized to the people of Japan for putting out an inferior product. They said it was due primarily to their lack of hiring sufficient product engineers over the last several years (maybe everyone doesn't realize that Japan has been in a recession for the last ten years) but that they were now ready to do so.
I heard about this and, of course, ended any thoughts of buying a Toyota...can't believe the editors of various consumer car magazines were not aware of this when they hyped the Toyota as the best car for 2007.
So much for so called "expert" advice.
The "recall" option presumes they have a solution. Several V6 owners report continuing problems even after valve body and transmission replacements, although the vast majority of I4 owners reporting back in after their TSB do indicate much improvement.
It's hard to tell if they've got the "solution" yet to provide via a recall for all owners, although several owners would probably prefer "buy back" as the solution.
Maybe the reason there hasn't been a recall is because as i understand only a few of all produced don't have problems either. Plus there is already a fix out there, so toyota has tried, right?
What i don't like about my ltd is the slab sides with no rub strip molding. After 8 months of ownership there are several dings from parking lots. I heard there were aftermarket moldings you can get. Anybody know where?
http://www.automotiveupgrades.com/custom.asp?id=47902&page=38
however, you probably can and should contact your dealer as this is one of those distributor installed accessories. they probably already have them in the matching color you need.
Speaking of brains please forgive a mistake in my other post. Meant to say only a few have the tranny problem, so it probably is why there hasn't been a recall.
Other than the door dings i really like this Camry. So far so good.
Do you have details or more information describing how to disable this chime?
Do you ever shift over to 4 from D when you want more acc?
espically when entering the highway or going up hill
Toyota administrators. It is time you chose one.
While I sympathize with the ones having driving difficulties I, from my own experiences, find the complaints over-wrought. I currently have 3 new model Toyotas, all DBW, two of which could experience some hesitation. Now admittedly I don't have the current Camry only the Solara 3.3L 5AT V6. None have experienced any of the problems to the extent expressed herein. But I do think that Toyota should continue as they are trying to find solutions to make the driving more enjoyable and not a hassle.
But class action suits? Please. There is always a caveat emptor factor in every purchase. Pushing for a class action suit on a product which you don't like is analagous to seeking a class action suit on a bomb of a movie. Extreme, yess, but still the same. You can't file suit for something that you don't like. Caveat Emptor.
Some may not like the 'feel' of the downshift in a turn or the up and down [non-permissible content removed] while on cruise but this is a like or dislike situation. Class actionable? Maybe by only the most lightly loaded 'ambulance-chasers'.
Some will say that it 'might' cause an accident by hesitating at a critically inopportune time. Learning to drive a particular vehicle is part of owning it. Lurch a manual transmission out into 80 mph freeway traffic and yes you 'might' cause an accident as well.
Recall or Service Campaign. A recall implies that all vehicles of a class need a correction. What if 95% of them do not? It appears this way. Then a Service Campaign/TSB progaram needs to be implemented to help those who do have very very real problems with the vehicles. This appears to be what is occuring. It makes no sense to inconvenience 95 owners who do not seem to want/need anthing done to their vehicles in order to improve the experience for 5 owners. The 5 owners will make their complaints known soon enough.
The warranty on the tires are from the tire manufacturer only.
You must by law go to the tire manufacturer or its distributor.
If it did the very same thing each and every time then anyone can adjust to that. I'm not saying they should have to by any means.
It's the intermittent nature of this problem that makes it a safety issue. I don't have one myself to experience but the way I read the posts the problem is that the transaxle downshifts quickly the clear majority of the time, and only rarely exhibits the delay even within the well defined circumstances as spelled out in the TSB of early 2003.
The simplest fix would be a big RED LED that starts flashing each time an upshift occurs on a lift-throttle event which depletes the ATF pressure reserve. The flashing would only stop once the ATF pressure "reserve" was restored.
Maybe even turn the LED to green once its okay to GO...!
even a minor hesitation at the inappropriate moment is enough to detract from the driver's attention and put someone in an unsafe situation. surely - any hesitation collides with all the causal learning people have from driving for decades with cable linkages between accelerator and throttle. and as wwest indicates, it's not a consistent problem. let's be generous and say not everyone's severity is going to be identical, nor is everyone's reaction to it.
once upon a time, in three forums related to hesitation in toyota / lexus vehicles which were marked read-only, people were actually arguing with owners that the problem was merely in their head. that it didn't exist.
well, even some dealerships are indicating there is no issue, and the cars are driving as designed. do you honestly believe that line?
that's pretty bold, totally the antethesis of customer centricity, and "moving forward"? no chance.
You could engage the seatbelt clamp and sit over it, you could try to disable the alarm somehow, or buy a seatbelt clamp and "plug it in" if you don't want to use a seatbelt.
As I have stated before, back late in the last century it was decided that engine compression braking on the front wheels was a significant enough of an adverse safety factor that it HAD to be somehow reduced if not eliminated altogether.
And yes, YES, it was thoughtless, VERY thoughtless, of the engineers to decide to adopt the new shift sequence/pattern/schedule without thinking through the consequences:
A) Premature transaxle failures in the '99 RX300 due to the inability to downshift completely and fully before the engine torque began to rise from the re-application of pressure to the gas pedal immediately after an upshift resulting from a (full??) lift-throttle event.
C) Back to the low capacity ATF oil pump for '04 and later RX series but now with DBW, e-throttle, to "PROTECT THE DRIVE TRAIN" by preventing the engine torque from rising before the downshift can be fully completed.
D) 3-4 gear shift engine "flare" results, undoubtedly, from Toyota's latest misadventure in their continuing attempts to solve the problem created by the adoption of the new shift pattern back in 96(??).
I strongly suspect that Ford has addressed this very same problem in the new FWD Ford Edge via their announcement of a new variable displacement ATF oil pump to increase the overall efficiency of the Edge transaxle.
It doesn't take much reading between the lines to come to a realization that a variable displacement ATF pump might also be the answer/solution to Toyota/Lexus' throttle lag, downshift hesitation problems.
High volume ATF pump pressure/flow with the engine at or near idle and a gear change upcoming, and little or virtually no flow at high engine RPM and no shift upcoming.
Highly efficient, yes. Toyota/lexus has recently adopted the same concept, variable vs fixed volume, for the A/C compressor. BMW the same for the engine lubricating oil pump. Is the power steering pump design soon to follow..?
Does anyone know the actual implementation of Ford's variable displacement ATF oil pump? Most automatics use a "gear" type oil pump which I am given to understand is not easily converted to have variable capability.
Sticky wicket, that.
wwest, we can't have it both ways simultaneously. we can't have for example, the system operating per design, and some people having hesitation while others are not... even with people's varying sensitivity to the issue.
i'm following to some degree your hypothesis, but we have to assume, the people with transmission issues is the minority of owners, right? we also have to believe there are a population of vehicle owners who have absolutely no issue.
if this weren't correct, then what would it be, the majority or the entirety of owners do have the issue? if that were true, then people who indicate there is no problem with their vehicles are perception challenged, under hypnosis or are toyota shills...
i don't believe it. not for a second.
i firmly believe there's some skewed gaussian probability density function that describes how many have it, and another as to severity.
The upshifting of the transaxle upon a lift throttle event is BY DESIGN, INTENTIONAL!
The 1-2 second throttle lag downshift hesitation/delay is INTENTIONAL, by design!
The upshifting is done to prevent engine compression braking from interfering with the operation of the anti-lock system and/or to reduce the potential for loss of directional control due to engine compression braking on an extremely(??) slippery roadbed surface.
The 1-2 second throttle lag is designed into the DBW, e-throttle system, to "protect the drive train". Absent that delay the transaxle clutches, like those in the '99 RX series, would not be likely to survive for more than 100,000 miles.
Is anyone of the belief that both of the above design aspects are not included in any current FWD or front torque biased AWD Toyota or Lexus vehicle?
It is currently my quite firm believe that ALL Toyota and Lexus FWD vehicle have the above design basis for exhibiting this particular problem.
For instance, I could easily define the "seat of the pants" feeling I get from the upshifting of my 2001 AWD RX300 as a "problem" since I know it to be the basic cause of the ATF overheating.
But having now driven the RX for well over 60,000 miles I must "tune" my senses in order to actually recognize the "feeling" of being "bumped" from behind just before coming to a full stop, or the "slingshot" effect when it upshifts during coastdown at 30-40MPH.
So, were my RX300 subject to the downshift delay, how often would I take note of it after enduring it for that same 60,000+ miles? And just how often does the downshift delay occur even for those experiencing it in the worse case?
If my theory is correct the worse case sequence is as follows.
A) The driver relaxes COMPLETE pressure on the gas pedal in order to coast down to a lower speed and maybe even applies light pressure to the brake pedal.
C) The engine/transaxle ECU must now wait for the previously commanded upshift to complete before it can issue the subsequent downshift command.
Meanwhile the engine is at idle and absent a pressure storage accumulator within the transaxle there will be very little ATF pressure/flow to support the subsequent downshift.
In the normal course of driving how often will that sequence occur for the average owner? Maybe never for some, or many?
I would guess it is the more safety conscious of the manufacturers who are having the most problems with this particular issue.
Overall public safety above reliability for the minority...??
What happened, who issued the edict, late in the last century, that resulted in the widespread adoption of this new shift technique before giving it more thought?
In the past I have proposed that the automotive insurance industry had a hand in this. Who else would have ready access to the statistics to show the severity of the safety issue (assuming such is the case) regarding engine compression braking on FWD vehicles?
Or the HAMMER, IRON FIST, power, to tell the industry, "Thou shalt do this, IMMEDIATELY!".