Toyota cars are known for their reliability, but after a mechanic put the manufacturer on blast, some viewers on TikTok are questioning its reputation.
Luis (@callescol97) recorded himself fixing an oil pan leak on a 2024 Toyota Camry. The Camry, he wrote in the accompanying text overlay, suffered from an oil pan leak at only 2,000 miles. Luis didn’t speak in the clip but showed viewers why there was a leak: The sealant used wasn’t strong enough to hold the gasket in place.
In his video, Luis drained the leftover oil, removed the lower oil pan, cleaned its surface, and ultimately reapplied the sealant before reinstalling the pan. However, after doing so, he called out Toyota, seemingly asking why the Camry model was having issues despite being so new.
“Toyota, let’s go places,” Luis quipped in his video’s caption. As of Sunday evening, his clip had amassed more than 818,900 views.
Is Toyota’s quality deteriorating?
Luis certainly isn’t the first content creator to put the car manufacturer on blast. But, unfortunately, there’s no easy “yes” or “no” answer here.
Over the years, several media outlets have attempted to answer this question. In 2010, for instance, NBC News reported that Toyota “may have sacrificed its reputation for excellence to the quest for market share and that, in its smugness, it may have ignored its customers and its own management principles.” At the time, the company had announced that it was recalling hundreds of thousands of hybrid cars due to braking issues.
Other outlets, such as TopSpeed, have noted that a dip in perceived reliability may be because the manufacturer has embraced newer and more complex technologies. New 2024 models have come under more scrutiny because of design changes, especially when, this year, Toyota offices in Japan were raided. Anecdotally, experts have said Toyota trade-in values have changed, too.
Reddit users have questioned whether the Toyota brand is declining in quality. Recently, a Reddit user complained in r/whatcarshouldIbuy that Toyota and Lexus products are both unaffordable and hard to maintain. “The new [Tundra] models [have] quite a lot of issues as well as other models. The interiors frankly suck,” they wrote. “The cheap plastics are able to be jiggled back and forth with ease, the fit and finish just isn’t there.”
But, again, there’s no one answer. Another piece from Jalopnik suggested that the automotive industry as a whole was suffering. That would imply that Toyota isn’t the only brand with issues and that any problems with the manufacturer are part of a larger mess.
@callescol97 Toyota, let’s go places #fyp #automotive #camry ♬ Vampiro – French Police
Commenters react
Regardless of whether the issues with the Toyota that Luis worked on are an isolated issue, several commenters said they believed that the manufacturer is not as dependable as it was in previous years.
“What’s happening at Toyota? I’ve seen 30 year old original Toyota oil pans hold up better than this,” one user noted.
“The new Toyotas have been horrible,” another echoed. “Idk what happened to Toyota.”
“Must’ve been built on a Friday at 4:45 p.m.,” a third user said of the Camry that Luis operated on.
But even if Toyotas are as dependable as they once were, internet users agree: Newer cars should not leak oil. If they do, according to one Quora forum, it’s because the car wasn’t built properly or because the engine gasket got worn out. Faulty seals were another culprit noted by one of the commenters in the thread.
And one alleged Toyota worker confirmed under Luis’ video that a combination of these things can cause premature oil leaks.
“RTV is put on at [a] factory by robots and when the machine runs out while it’s sealing, workers don’t notice there isn’t full coverage,” he wrote. “Happened to mine.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Luis via TikTok comment and to Toyota by email.
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