Other powertrain problem on the 2008 Toyota Avalon
1 crash 1 injury 2 of the 6 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 6 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.
When other powertrain problem gets reported
There are 6 reports of other powertrain problem on the 2008 Toyota Avalon, 6 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 92,000 miles. It is the 12th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 6,500 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, 1 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 $400–$4,500 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 12 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2019, at a median of 900 miles, and latest on the 2015 at 210,000 miles.
By volume the 2006 carries the most reports, with 39; the 2008 has 6. 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.
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.
Purchased a 2008 toyota avalon limited. Discovered this car's engine can be shut off with the automatic transmission not in park allowing the car to roll freely. In my opinion this is a safety hazard . This problem is compounded now with the new push button on/off switch used to control the motor. I found this to be the case when I accidentally pushed the start/stop engine switch with the transmission not in park stopping the engine. The car started to free roll in the garage. This is compounded by the poor steering and braking action response when the engine is not running. I can not see why toyota did not install an interlock switch to ensure the engine could neither be started nor stopped unless the automatic transmission was in park? Am I missing something? Thanks for your consideration in this matter. *tr
Tl*the contact owns a 2008 toyota avalon. The contact stated that the vehicle's rpms radically increased and a loud revving noise was heard. The failure is more noticeable after accelerating from an idle position. The failure is intermittent and there are no warning lights illuminated prior to the failure. She took the vehicle to the dealer and a representative stated that this was a normal characteristic of the vehicle. The manufacturer would not assist. There was no correlation between the speed and the failure. The failure mileage was 19.
My husband got into the car the late afternoon of jan. 17, 2010. Turned the auto on and I thought the engine was exploding. I was inside the house and ran outdoors. Something under the hood was making an extreme loud rattle. If you took an old cow bell and shook it for dear life, you would get an ideal of what I am talking about regarding the sound. The check engine light and the vsc light was on. My husband cut the engine off, checked under the hood and found nothing. I was going to call the dealership to see if they wanted to tow the car in. I started the car back up just to see what would happen and it purred like a baby. No lights on. I took it to the dealership and they checked it out, test drove it and could not find anything wrong. They said whatever it was must have reset itself. Now my question is what caused it to act like that and what would have happened if I had been driving. Was it in the computer or what. Will it happen again? These things I would like to have an answer. *cn
Also reported on the 2008 Toyota Avalon
Headlight failure or clouding
Other lighting problem
Other speed control problem
Other body or interior problem
Other electrical problem
Cruise control failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 6 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 6 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 powertrain problem happen on the 2008 Toyota Avalon?
Across 6 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 5,000 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 powertrain problem on the 2008 Toyota Avalon?
6 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