Toyota routinely ranks among the most reliable car brands on the planet, and the Japanese behemoth and Volkswagen have vied for the title of world’s best-selling marque in recent years. The RAV4 even passed the Ford F-150 as America’s top-selling vehicle of any kind in 2024, indicating global approval for the brand and a shift in buyers’ preferences. Toyota’s robust sales and reputation for quality doesn’t mean every one of its buyers are satisfied with their cars, however.
In mid-December of 2025, James LeBoutheller’s attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit in East Texas District court alleging that Toyota knowingly sold cars with “defects in their UA80 8-speed automatic transmissions and torque converters (collectively referred to as the “Transmission Assembly”) and related software.” The eight-speed gearbox is used in some of the manufacturer’ most popular models like theToyota RAV4, Camry and Highlander and Lexus ES 250/350 and NX 250/350. The lawsuit alleges that the UA80 — which first appeared in 2017 as a replacement for an older six-speed transmission — suffers from issues related to this evolution.
Toyota will update the software on some models
The newer transmission was lighter and shorter than the model it replaced and was meant to help cut back on CO2 emissions. The valve body was relocated forward and the gear shift mechanism simplified, but the lawsuit claims this actually caused more problems. New software also initiated earlier upshifts to save fuel, which the proposed lawsuit says caused transmission fluid to overheat. This reduces the fluid’s ability to lubricate properly, leading to breakdowns from wear and degradation. It further claims that Toyota made no changes to the UA80 after complaints surfaced nearly a decade ago, although the company responded to complaints at the time. In December 2017 Toyota issued a Technical Service Bulletin pointing out that some 2018 Camry models behaved erratically while slowing down or accelerating and recommended a software update for affected vehicles. We reviewed the 2018 Camry about six months before that directive went out but didn’t encounter any such problems during our time with it.
In April of 2019 Toyota issued a separate notice to its dealership service departments extending the warranty on some vehicles with UA80 gearboxes to 10 years from first use. The the National Highway Transportation Safety Association (NHTSA) has issued no safety recalls for the UA80 as of this writing, but erratic acceleration is potentially dangerous and could prompt such a move someday. The class-action lawsuit also seeks compensation for reduction in resale value, a trend that continues the longer Toyota goes without correcting the underlying issues.
Comments are closed.