In the latest issue of R&T, there is a page, pg. 111, dedicated to a Long-Term Test of the 2001 Lexus IS300. I’m not going to go into detail about this whole editorial, since the positive and negative aspects of the car are the same aspects pointed out by many other magazines, but there was one portion of this particular article that caught my attention. They mention the transmission hesitation issue occurring in our IS300s. In fact two editors experience and document this transmission conundrum.
“One chink in the IS 300’s otherwise pristine armor is the transmission. “From rest, or when picking up the throttle from cruise, the transmission can slip, then engage rather harshly. Bam! Pretty unsettling, and it doesn’t bode well for longevity,” reports Executive Editor Doug Kott.
Senior Editor Andrew Bornhop concurs. “I notice this abrupt shifting too, but I find it slips, then ‘bams’ when I do a California-style stop or am creeping through a parking lot slowly before accelerating swiftly.””
Finally, this gremlin has been brought out into the public eye and maybe Lexus/Toyota will get their act together and confront this issue properly. Probably many others and I are pretty tired of Lexus trying to sweep this bug under the carpet. Lexus even acts dumb in front of the R&T editors:
“When we brought the car in for routine maintenance, it was thoroughly inspected with everything transmission-related checking out just fine. Our dealer was unaware of any similar problems with other IS 300s.”
-crontab -l
“One chink in the IS 300’s otherwise pristine armor is the transmission. “From rest, or when picking up the throttle from cruise, the transmission can slip, then engage rather harshly. Bam! Pretty unsettling, and it doesn’t bode well for longevity,” reports Executive Editor Doug Kott.
Senior Editor Andrew Bornhop concurs. “I notice this abrupt shifting too, but I find it slips, then ‘bams’ when I do a California-style stop or am creeping through a parking lot slowly before accelerating swiftly.””
Finally, this gremlin has been brought out into the public eye and maybe Lexus/Toyota will get their act together and confront this issue properly. Probably many others and I are pretty tired of Lexus trying to sweep this bug under the carpet. Lexus even acts dumb in front of the R&T editors:
“When we brought the car in for routine maintenance, it was thoroughly inspected with everything transmission-related checking out just fine. Our dealer was unaware of any similar problems with other IS 300s.”
-crontab -l
