AtWhatMileage
Engine · 7 owner reports

Other engine problem on the 2007 Lexus IS

2 crashes 1 injury 3 of the 7 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Only 4 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 7
With an odometer reading 4
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 75%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 3
Typical repair $300–$4,000
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 5th

When other engine problem gets reported

There are 7 reports of other engine problem on the 2007 Lexus IS, 4 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 95,000 miles. It is the 5th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 4 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 11,500 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Of these reports, 2 a crash and 1 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $300–$4,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 4 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2007, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2008 at 95,000 miles.

By volume the 2006 carries the most reports, with 11; the 2007 has 7. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 2002 Lexus IS other engine problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 2003 Lexus IS other engine problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 2005 Lexus IS other engine problem 47k
  4. 2006 Lexus IS other engine problem 67k
  5. 2007 (this one) 12k
  6. 2008 Lexus IS other engine problem 93k
  7. 2009 Lexus IS other engine problem 40k
  8. 2010 Lexus IS other engine problem 81k
  9. 2011 Lexus IS other engine problem 115k
  10. 2012 Lexus IS other engine problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  11. 2013 Lexus IS other engine problem 64k
  12. 2014 Lexus IS other engine problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  13. 2018 Lexus IS other engine problem
    no odometer readings given
    —

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Vsc warning light came with check engine light. Pulled in a local dealership, was told car was ok to continue driving but make an appointment for service. Left dealership, went approx 0.5 miles to get gas. When I stopped the car there were loud scrambling noises like an animal was loose in the dash. Popped the hood, couldn't see anything- looked under car and all the transmission fluid was pouring out. Had car towed back to dealership. Still waiting for verdict. Car is only 7 months old and this will be my 3rd time in the shop. At 3 months had to receive full wheel alignment due to severe shaking and pulling to the left. At 6 months brought car in complaining of a loud creaking during turns- arm bolt was loose and needed to be tightened. Also, the windshield makes a loud crack/pop noise every morning on my way to work. This car had excellent reviews, what happened! *tr

5,300 miles NHTSA complaint 624773 filed 2007-05-20

Tl*the contact owns a 2007 lexus is 250. The contact stated that the dealer could not repair the vehicle according to NHTSA campaign id number 09v020000 (engine and engine cooling) in a reasonable amount of time. The failure and current mileages were 14,000. Updated 03/12/09. *lj the dealer informed the consumer, the next appointment was within a month. Updated 03/16/09. *jb

14,000 miles NHTSA complaint 708693 filed 2009-02-17

I was driving on a local country road at about 15-20 MPH (having just come out of a sharp turn). When I stepped on the accelerator after the turn, it suddenly began to "gun", at which point I stepped on the brake and to my horror got no response. I kept my foot on the brake, but the accelerator continued to rev or gun horrifyingly and the car continued to speed up. At another sharp turn I went off the road and sideswiped a tree, drove through the bedroom of a house (in one wall and out the other) and finally stopped in another tree. After an hour of police, fire, and other emergency personnel attempting to extricate me from the car, they had to remove the roof of the car to get me out of the vehicle. I was airlifted to the nearest hospital with a trauma center, where I was diagnosed with a fractured sternum, three broken ribs, two fractured vertebrae, and a lacerated liver. I was in the hospital for three days, after which I was released with a custom-fitted back brace that I was required to wear for the next six weeks. Fortunately, I was not permanently injured, but I suffer back pain regularly as a result of the fractured…

9,000 miles NHTSA complaint 907124 filed 2012-02-27

Also reported on the 2007 Lexus IS

Other body or interior problem

44 reports median 80k

Other visibility problem

21 reports median 68k

Airbag inflator rupture

8 reports median 152k

Headlight failure or clouding

7 reports median 70k

Other steering problem

7 reports median 115k

Other electrical problem

6 reports median 96k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 7 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 7 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does other engine problem happen on the 2007 Lexus IS?

Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 10,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other engine problem on the 2007 Lexus IS?

7 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed