2007 Toyota Tundra SR5 from North America - All Comments

20:10 I am a loyal Toyota owner. I'm on my third in 15 years, and have yet to have a single repair on any of them.

Most everyone I know, my family and friends have all made the smart choice and bought Toyota's, or Honda's. I know many people with new Toyota's; no more than 1 or 2 years old, and they ALL have the same experience I have had with them: not a single problem.

It seems to me that the only time I hear of any problems Toyota has are in print, usually anonymous, like here, and that's about it.

I know that they are just machines, and surely some of them do break. But very, very few. Almost nothing compared to such disastrous auto manufacturers as Ford or Chevy.

Everybody I know that likes to keep vehicles for a long time, and has bought a Toyota, has kept it for upward of 275,000 miles with no major repairs; in some cases, many more miles than that. And I know of a few very high mileage '02 - '05 models also; still flawless to date. You cannot do this with a Ford or Chevy, and I don't care who says otherwise. If you get that kind of mileage out of a Ford, you are 1 in a 100,000 or so. Every Toyota I've come in contact with has done this. Everyone can talk, talk, and talk some more, but Toyota owners know the proof is in the years of flawless ownership that we all get.

It took Ford 30 years to make the Panther platform reliable, and that goes with most other of their platforms. It does not help the equation that interior quality is only comparable to GM, and safety is not top priority unless you have the Taurus.

2104 Are your vehicles less than 5 years old? The news comments last night were on late model imports.

Let us take a look at that report shall we? Let's see...

"The survey dropped Toyota from first to fifth place - behind Honda, Acura, Scion and Subaru - in average vehicle reliability. The rankings are based on average predicted reliability for all models sold under a given brand."

OK... So if the argument is that all those "die-hard import fans" are wrong, then it looks like the top 5 are STILL ALL Japanese brand cars.

Let us read further...

"Domestic manufacturers General Motors (Charts, Fortune 500), Ford (Charts, Fortune 500) and Chrysler continued to improve in the Consumer Reports reliability rankings. But only Buick, GM's near-luxury brand ranked number 10, made into the top ten."

So as we can see, GM isn't even in the top 10 with the exception of Buick. Not exactly a dead-ringer, wouldn't you say?

How bout' a bit more?

"Ford, in particular, is improving in quality, according to Consumer Reports. In all, 93 percent of Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles showed average or better reliability in the most recent reliability survey.

Among overall brands, Ford's Mercury brand ranked 11th, the Ford brand ranked 13th and the Lincoln luxury brand ranked 14th. Other than Buick, they were the highest-ranking domestic brands."

The same can be said for all the domestic manufactures, which is that they indeed show vast improvement. I'll give them that. But improvement from what? Improvement from the old Taurus or perhaps a few of those old Ford Windstards that blew trannys with regularity before 50k? If we're talking improvement, then yes- I will agree. But that isn't really saying that much when comparing the garbage GM and Ford were mass-producing barely 2 years ago.It is easy to improve when you're improving basically from the rock-bottom.

Here's another tidbit:

"Of the 39 cars rated "Most Reliable" in Consumer Reports new list, four are by domestic manufacturers. They are the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, two-wheel-drives Ford F-150 V6 and GM's Pontiac Vibe. The Vibe is built in cooperation with Toyota and shares its engineering with the Toyota Matrix."

So in reality, only 3 of those cars are actually domestic. The Vibe is basically the equivalent of an 86' Chevy Nova: A Toyota with a GM badge stuck on the front. Wow. A whopping THREE cars out of almost 40 that are domestic are reliable. How bout' them numbers?

It goes on to say:

"But 20 of the 44 "least reliable" models named by Consumer Reports were also from domestic manufacturers."

Interesting. So how are domestics supposedly more reliable than many of the imports?

To conclude- Yes, you are right in a very thin-veiled way. Domestics have IMPROVED. But the question is are they any good? Improvement versus actual warranted quality are two totally different things.

To all the "Toyota Engine sludging problem" OK... well if this single problem makes an entire brand defective, then how do you conclude that a brand like Ford which produces cars like the Taurus that has any number of the following defects:

1: mis-mated transmission pans

2: Faulty TPS sensors

3: Faulty electric window relays

4: Improperly machined oil passages and coolant resevoirs that cause the engines to blow head gaskets.

I could go on, but I think this review of one on this site pretty much sums it up:

"- Front motor mount... 3 times.

- Rear motor mount... 4 times.

- High pressure power steering hose. (Which almost never breaks on any other automobile)

- Power steering pump which got noisy after the above line broke.

- Both inner CV joints have caused tremendous vibration in the car and had to be repaired.

- Air conditioner compressor.

- High pressure air conditioner line... Not leaking O-Rings. The line actually blew up.

- Brake rotors had to be repaired several times due to warping and then replaced.

- Head gaskets which I didn't repair. I had another problem which necessitated engine replacement before I could repair the gaskets.

- Both outer and both inner tie rod ends.

- The wiper motor currently 'parks' the wipers up instead of down. At least they still work.

- Water pump.

- Alternator - 3 times.

- Stereo deck - The car came with a Ford 'Premium' sound system. Right!

- Some sort of vacuum sensor that deals with gas fumes was defective.

- When first driving in cold weather there is a very bad squeaking from the right front.

- When driving on the highway over 60 mph there is a 'catch' when making a slight wheel turn to the left that nobody can figure out.

-Throttle Position Sensor went out (the day I took it home)

Fuel gauge sending unit never worked (read full or empty, nothing in-between)

-3 fuel injector went bad ($1500)

-2 Water pumps.

-2 new rotors (recalled) replaced twice because the dealer didn't adjust the.

Back breaks and it fried the new set of rotors.

-1 Heater core ($600)

-Alignment couldn't be set to specs. in the rear.

-Trunk leaked (a result of the tail light gaskets being dirty, removing tail.

Lights and cleaning gaskets remedied this problem)

-Transmission leaked and then died (2 twice after only 10000 miles each time)

-Power steering hose ruptured.

Power steering pump leaked like a river.

- oil leaks"

So... Toyota made a few engines in the 90's that on rare occasion after extreme abuse might sludge. How do you defend a car like the one above? Oh- and these are not freak occurrences either... Just read the reviews.

10:12 Thanks for printing all of that and saving me the trouble. That should silence all of the domestic owners who read selectively.

Here it is again, Ford and Chevy guys: IMPORTS are still rated much higher in quality and a LOT more often. Your Ford and Chevy rattletraps still can't compare, as usual.

To the poster above... me a break. I have not seen any person on this site advocating American vehicles, who claims that every single one of them ever made was perfect. Sure there are bad apples...among all manufacturers. But, the only people who seem to not want to admit it, or at the very least try to make light of it, are the Toyota fans regarding Toyota problems.

You are excusing the fact that thousands of Toyota owners are having their engines fail on their two and three year old Toyota's. In many cases, these customers still owe tens of thousands of dollars on these vehicles, which are now nothing more then an expensive lawn ornament.

I have no problem at all responding to the post above, gleefully citing an instance of a problematic Taurus, asking what I/we thought of it. I have no interest in covering things up like the Toyota crowd seems intent on doing. Shame on Ford or anyone else for any garbage they have put out over the years. But will you say shame on Toyota for doing the same? Of course last I checked, Ford was not selling cars with engines that self destruct in well under 100,000 miles.

What do you have to say for all of the complaints against Toyota posted to Consumer Affairs documenting the massive sludge/engine-failure problem that you are trying to cast aside? It's right here in the link below, and mind you, these are only the people that bothered to make a post:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/toyota_engine.html

Take a look at all of the unhappy faces around the Toyota thread on this site. I could have copied/pasted several here for you to read like as did with the Taurus review, but frankly, I think the tactic is very petty. Anyone can find a bad review for any car they need to suit any agenda they want. Do a Google search for "Toyota Engine Sludge." The truth is all around for you to read it. The question is, will you find it enlightening, or inconvenient?

You seem so willing to defend any problem of Toyota's, no matter how serious. Will you at least acknowledge that Toyota has been having serious difficulties recently? If you like Toyota as a car company and want to stick with them through their difficulties, with the hope that they will get their act together, I can at least understand that. But, if you will not even acknowledge they are having very serious problems, I think you are forcing your credibility, and perhaps even motives, to be brought seriously into question.

Did anybody see ABC's 'world news tonight' yesterday? One of their top stories was Consumer Reports released it's latest reliablilty ratings and Ford is now more reliable than Toyota because of recent and increasingly frequent problems with the new Camry. So you people can stop using 'Toyota is more reliable' as an excuse to buy them.

Toyota should up their warranty to 100,000 miles then... Is Honda better than a Toyota? Why did I switch to domestics when my vehicles failed at such low mileage?

15:20 Yeah, I watched it. And you apparently watched it, but only heard what you wanted to hear. Toyota has dropped to fifth place, only behind four other imports including Honda and Suburu. Ford is THIRTEENTH place. Ford are not, never were, and never will be as reliable as Toyota overall. Nice try, read more closely next time. Ford is still on the bottom, right where they have always belonged.

15:20,

See the above reprinted story. It doesn't at all state that Ford is MORE reliable than Toyota. All the report mentioned was that Ford, GM, and Chrysler had shown Improvement. None of the three are even in the top 10. Toyota is still in the top 5.

I laugh when I hear of people flocking to domestics. I never have heard of anything like that. Nor have I ever heard of a GM or Ford dealer pulling in so many Toyotas on trade in. Plus we don't the numbers show this? Maybe 4/100 million Camrys on the road were traded on a Pontiac or a Mercury Tracer. Sorry, but you will have to back up this phenomena.

The Consumer Reports are biased anyways. It's sad to see how many people believe everything they have to say.

"The domestic crowd believes that the Big 3 build higher quality vehicles than Toyota. They are incorrect.

The import crowd believes that Toyota builds higher quality vehicles than the Big 3. They are correct."

Sorry, YOU believe that Toyota is superior. A fact is something not able to be argued with, it IS. Saying that Toyota is better is NOT a fact, because it simply isn't "is."

You cannot state such to be a fact, because all it will ever remain to be is an opinion.

The truth of the matter is that the Chevrolet Malibu is the best car ever built.