aeroengine

Dealer bought it back at full trade in $32,500 for $13K miles with some rash on the front and sold me a new 2008 RX at his invoice acording to NADA - we had a mutual agreement that he made his profit the first time around on the ES350 and would make no profit a second time to solve the problem. I thought that was very fair. Its Toyota's problem NOT THE DEALER'S and TOYOTA is doing NOTHING.

2JZ_SC

First I found this thread by accident, I have seen 2003 2004 Toyota Sienna vans get the accelerator stuck and not come up off the floor. I was driving a new (less then 50 miles) to the airport one day. I hade some other people in the van. There was a rock truck in the road in front of me. I floored it to pass the truck. After passing I let up on the gas pedal, The pedal stayed on the floor. I taped it, nothing. I taped the brakes, nothing. I finally jammed the brakes and got over to the shoulder of the road. (the engine is still racing) Turned off the key, as the motor started to die we heard the pedal pop off the floor and return to its normal position. Started it up and it drove fine. Got back to the shop and pulled codes and freeze frame data, NO codes so no freeze frame. This is not the first or last time that I hade one of those vans do that to me. It is the only one that tapping the brakes would not fix. Just putting my 2 cents in.

jerfitz

It sounds like it was a MECHANICAL thing. Did you feel that something was binding or holding the pedal down. In other words NOT an electrical/electronic thing.

twister

First of all, CONGRATS on this resolution. RX is a great car!!!

Second, don't want to burst your bubble, but your sales guy did make money on you if he sold it at invoice. We are talking about '08 model which hasn't been sitting on the lot for awhile. So, he made his profit through HOLDBACK (http://www.safecarguide.com/gui/neg/holdback.htm). Invoice makes sales guy sound "honest" like they are doing you a favor. BTW, holdback on Lexus is about $1k

ChillBill

Aeroengine said: "Make no mistake this is NOT the floormat problem"

How did you confirm this?

Did the car have the Lexus All-weather floor mats?

Were the rubber All-weather floor mats attached with the anchors?

Were the carpeted floor mats underneath of the All-weather mats?

aeroengine

Thanks for the link on holdback - I knew I was giving him the holdback but that's ok because he's assumed the liability of the declared problem, and he's going to have to hold my car until Lexus of North America comes to recertify it to take him off the hook. According to NHTSA thid usually takes 3 weeks, plus he is going to have to re-shoot the front bumper of my ES350 to get the scratches off of it. To me $1000 is an acceptable concession.

One of my neighbors is suggesting I trade in the RX350 because of its tranny problems for the Mercedes Crossover, but I don't know whether the extra $10K is worth it.

LexBob2

Consumer Reports says "reliability is disappointing" about the M Class Mercedes.

What kind of trans problems is the RX having?

VroomVroom

If you haven't already, I'd strongly recommend spending time at some Mercedes forum sites before making that decision.

aeroengine

First of all I never purchased the all weather mats for the car. Nor have all weather mats ever been in the car. I took a digital photograph of the foot pedal arrangement right after the crash thinking I needed to make some measurements of the foot pedals but ruled that out later when I discovered the witness marks on the garage door confirmed my wife had her foot on the brake not the gas ruling out the Audi scenario. The photograph shows the mat right after the crash. In the 13000 miles we had the car I never even vacuumed it or disturbed the factory carpeted mat installation (was properly engaging the hooks that retain it.) Believe it or not this is NOT a floor mat induced problem.

Right now I betting the root cause is a single fault in the Cruise control (which we have used only once when we got the car to see if it worked) and which hasn't been used since. Toyota needs to look at the possibility that the cruise control turned itself on through some fault and saw a speed deficit.

ChillBill

Very good. Since the original post didn't mention how you eliminated the rubber floor mat as a possibility, I had to ask. Because the rubber floor mats appear to be capable of pinning the accelerator relatively easily when not anchored, it would be the first thing to rule out.

It'll be interesting to find out what then led to the failure, whether it was cruise control as you suggest, a corrupted signal, or other.

Do you get the impression that Lexus is going to investigate this vehicle or do you think they will just resell it to the next unsuspecting customer?

Thanks for replying.

aeroengine

What I learned from the NHTSA engineers is that they have nothing like the authority the FAA has to cause investigation of a suspect system or car. If this was under the jurisdiction the FAA (as if it were and aircraft problem) my car would have been on the next freighter jet to Tokyo and there would have been a team of FAA and Toyota engineers sitting around test results and fault trees trying to design instrumentation and a test procedure to duplicate the problem. Unfortunately the NHTSA is not the FAA and the engineers at the NHTSA and I are resigned that there will probably have to be a number of people killed with cars WITHOUT FLOOR MATS and then it will go on 20/20 or Dateline before there is any action. Unfortunately the floor mat issue while serious, will be used by Lexus to distract the media from the much more serious fault that my wife experienced. We feel lucky she didn't hurt or kill somebody.

gpension

Just curious - given the situation, why did you buy another Lexus?

LexBob2

Good question. Especially since you already have concerns about the transmission in your new RX.

aeroengine

I rationalized that the RX350 has had only 1 unexplained failure and sells 2:1 and there have been 8 Non Floor Mat unexplained on the ES350. The RX has an on-off key. Statisitcally its highly improbable that we will have lightening strike in the same place twice. If I had traded my ES350 to a Non-Lexus dealer, I would have had to disclose the problem and gotten killed on the trade in or worse if the car ever injures or kills somebody, whether I disclosed or not, I'm in a position of getting sued. I felt the best path was to trade for another Lexus at Dealer invoice so I would have a New "fungable" asset with no "hair" on it so to speak so I can trade it out for something else with no liability if I feel the risk of RX events is becoming too large.