I bought my 2002 Toyota Solara new in November of 2001. I have always been told that toyotas last forever. That's a crock! I've had significant problems over the years. I've had this car serviced religiously...always on or before schedule. Now the last and very significant problem that has developed over this past year is worn valve guides/seals? At around 120,000 when first noticed, this is absurd! I have always taken good care of this car and it still looks like new. Trouble is, the engine sucks! I will never purchase a toyota again.

I am a former auto mechanic that now works on heavy trucks. Needless to say my wife and I were very disappointed to have to make this type of a repair at this relatively low mileage on a car / brand that is considered to be one of the leaders in automotive quality. We checked with the dealer where we bought the car new and were told they were not aware of other cars of the same vintage / model having this problem (yeah right) and that it was / is not a subject of any recalls. In short it would cost us to fix it. I was sure that the problem was with the valve seals for several reasons: fairly sudden onset of the condition (heavy blue smoke on start up), only a very minimal increase in oil consumption, no loss of fuel mileage or performance. Other than the embarrassment from the smoke when the car started the problem was more annoying than anything but A CAR OF THIS SUPPOSED QUALITY SHOULD NOT BE HAVING THIS PROBLEM AT THIS MILEAGE! As I work long hours at my current job we elected to have the local community college auto mechanics shop fix the car. They scoped the cylinders through the spark plug holes and saw no indicators of ring / cylinder wall problems so they proceeded to examine the valve guide seals. They were definitely bad. Replacement was accomplished with the head on. Our cost was for parts only as the labor was free. The auto shop instructor said this was the 4th Toyota like ours that they had replaced the valve guide seals in. Seems that this is a very real problem with this engine. I guess that we should be thankful that we don't have the 2001 and earlier engine that the oil gallies plug up / sludge up easily in. Incidentally our car has had regular oil changes / service at the recomended intervals using premium non synthetic oil and filters. Still the valve seal failures occurred. Seems pretty evident that the seals were made of defective material and that Toyota should step up and fix the problem.

This is the same Camry I had reported a transmission failure at 75,900 miles.

Neither Toyota nor the dealer offered any support except to tell me it was unusual and for $3800 they could help me.

I ended up replacing the trans with a used one from another source as I had decided Toyota would never get anymore money from me. The car continued to destruct. The valve guides (seals) went out resulting in an embarrassing cloud of blue smoke each morning upon start up.

Check engine light came on and stayed on. The problem was the catalytic converter had gone bad.

Door locks stopped working................

I've owned many different cars and never had such a disappointing ownership experience before or since.