general problems of the 2001 Lexus RX300

The vehicle was started and in park in a flat lot. When I shifted to reverse, it did not engage/roll back. As I applied pressure to the accelerator nothing happened until a it suddenly clunked and lurched back. I put it back in park and then it repeated the same synptom. The transmission has now begun to whine and there is rumbling and jerkily between rough shifts on the streets and highway. After hearing and reading numerous horror stories of these transmission problems, and how they have suddenly gone out or locked up at highway speeds, I'm sure this is a problem Lexus has known about and is defective, especially since it represents more than 70% of the nthsas published complaints on this vehicle. There should be an investigation into this. The sudden unreliability of this transmission and it's potential to cause harm is not a coincidence among these many reports. If this were a boeing max 8 plane it'd be out of commission for a failure like this!.

My transmission is not shifting smoothly between gears. This happened about 7 years ago and I had to have the transmission replaced. Now it is happening again.

The contact owns a 2001 Lexus Rx300. The contact stated that the reverse gear was no longer operable in the vehicle. The vehicle was taken to the dealer to be diagnosed. The contact was informed that the transmission needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 147,651.

The transmission has been damage no power , no gears are engage total failure, the vehicle has in motion at highway speed.

The contact owns a 2001 Lexus Rx300. The contact stated that the vehicle failed to shift into reverse. The vehicle was taken to an independent mechanic who diagnosed that the transmission needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 162,000.

The contact owns a 2001 Lexus Rx300. While driving 40 mph, the transmission seized and the gear could not be shifted into park. The vehicle was taken to an independent mechanic who diagnosed that the transmission needed to be replaced. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 145,000.

Transmission went out ,the vehicle jus stopped in the middle of the road thank god it was not the highway. There seems to be a problem with the transmission in these vehicle ,a very serious life threatening problem.

The contact owns a 2001 Lexus Rx300. The contact stated that when attempting to shift, the shifter would delay. In addition while driving at 35 mph, the vehicle lost power and failed to accelerate. The contact attempted to restart the vehicle and after multiple attempts, the vehicle was able to restart but the failure recurred. The vehicle was taken to an independent mechanic, who stated that the transmission needed to be flushed. The vehicle was repaired but the failure recurred. In addition, the vehicle failed to reverse after the repairs. The vehicle was not repaired. The failure mileage was 192,000.

The contact owns a 2001 Lexus RX 300. The contact stated that the while driving at various speeds, there would be a sudden loss of acceleration. The vehicle was taken to a dealer where it was diagnosed that the transmission needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was 150,000.

Purchased from my mother in 2013 at 115k after she had purchased new from dealership. Babied, dealer serviced, my transmission gave out at 130k at a cost of $3800!!! then in less than a year it went again, and it was under aamco warranty. Then transmission went again in 2018, and just out of warranty. Why is there not a class action lawsuit!!!!!! car died 3 separate times without warning in very dangerous situations. $3800 was my entire savings, and now my Lexus was the only thing I had of value, and it is worth $250 as a junker!.

I have just sat and read probably 50 complaints; safety and defective, concerning the transmission for the 2001 Lexus Rx300. From what im reading, I guess I should consider myself lucky, I currently have 142,000 miles on my vehicle and although I've experienced non-periodic shifting abnormalities, I haven't experienced any of the horrific problems I've been reading in the NHTSA complaint section of this site. It is obvious there is a manufacturing defect that needs to be addressed before someone (if not already) is mangled or worst, killed. It astonishes me that a company that survives by there reputation for quality would not address what is obviously a serious and costly burden to there loyal customers. We are talking about a 35,000 dollar vehicle in 2001. Apparently Lexus is not planning on resolving the issue, so what can consumers do other than complain which obviously is doing nothing to force big business to take responsibility for there poor design that resulted in unsafe costly products, leaving the consumer powerless, with no option but to pay them again to fix the problem they created in the first place.

Car can only be driven at <5mile for 10 second. Loss power at higher gear.

Driving along normally, the transmission began moving in and out of gear spontaneously. Depressing the accelerator resulted sometimes in revving the engine, other times in acceleration, and other times switching back and forth between the two causing the car to jerk. Thankfully, I was not far from home and was able to get back safely.

My 2001 Lexus Rx300 which only has 115k miles on it, completely shut down in rush hour traffic. I could not accelerate at all and I was almost side swapped by an oncoming vehicle. No service light came on and I had not had any problems indicating this. After having the car towed to my mechanic, the diagnosis was that my transmission had completely failed, the trans clutches burned out, along with fluid debris in oil pan. I have my car regularly serviced and even the mechanic said there was nothing I could have done to prevent this. My mechanic said he has worked on several Rx300 whose diagnosis was the exact same-transmission. After researching this further, it appears Lexus has not taken ownership of this problem and even though this is an older model, this should not be taken lightly. What if my 2 children in the car? is it going to take a fatality for Lexus to own up to this?.

Own a 2001 Lexus Rx300. While driving 40 mph the vehicle would not accelerate even when I depressed the accelerator pedal. The vehicle was towed to the dealer and they stated that the transmission needed to be replaced. The current mileage was 125,000. Will cost me $4500 to repair(refurbished part).

I drove this car from school to home as usual. The transmission is gone suddenly that I had no time to prepare, the car was losing control and driving into an elementary school. The car almost hit an old lady with a small girl. Fortunately, I finally got control of this car and we were all safe. This generation of Lexus Rx300 has serious transmission problem, many cases can be found online. I would highly suggest the manufacturer recall those cars and carefully examine the problem, in order to avoid such incident happen again. Those cars are becoming older, many more problems will be manifest.

Ok I bought a Lexus Rx300 1/08/10 was constricted in driving it due to the snow storms hitting the northeast. I got the car with 128,000 miles on it and now it has 129,095. I go to drive to school today and while on a back highway doing 45-50 mph my car looses power and I have to stop in heavy traffic and push it off. I go to try and move the car and shift gears and it doesn't move. I called the tow truck and got a tow home and call the dealership they tell me to basically go eff' myself. I suspect it is the transmission and will find out tomorrow because I called Lexus and they told me to go to a dealer and they will call me in 1-2 business day. If I was on the highway doing speeds excess 50 with my son in the car the outcome could have been very different I hope you can help. I had the car for 45 days. . . .

2000 Lexus RX 300 (this is a Toyota camry engine in a Lexus body) car transmission would not change into high gears 3 & 4 for highway driving, preventing acceleration. Lexus of norwood, MA replaced the entire transmission under warranty. 5,000 miles later the new transmission was doing the same thing, after a week they finally gave it back to and said it was repaired but not what they had to fix and were very sketchy, it was still under warranty. Finally the repair technician told in low tones so not to be heard that it was computer software problem and that;s why they would not tell me. So they replaced an entire transmission at 48000 miles incorrectly when all they had to do was do a software bug fix. I think this is significant because the computer prevented acceleration but could probably also cause unintended acceleration. They do not have control of their software running these engines and don't want to admit because they don't know how to fix it.

The vehicle lurched forward after the engine was turned off, and the keys were removed from the ignition, which caused an accident.