From: beguna on
Looks like everything I said about Toyota quality was true.
You might remember that I thought the quality of our 2001 Avalon was
very poor. Body in particular was flexible and stretched when you
accelerated and compressed when you hit the breaks. I swore off
Toyota but my wife wanted a Camry Hybrid and bought a new 2008.

Wouldn't you know it. That thing started creaking and rattling after
a year. This time at least I got some service from Toyota. Turns out
that a large number of Camry's were improperly welded at the factory.
They had to remove the right front fender and stuff underneath it to
re-weld the cage. That fixed the major creaking and also eliminated a
bunch of other clicks and rattles in the car.

But the bad thing is that the service manager told me that there was
only certain serial numbers involved and mine was outside the range
but clearly mine was also defective. So Toyota doesn't even know when
a major defect started in manufacturing..... pretty bad.

You have to wonder what would have happened if the car had been
involved in an accident before the repair. Would the 5 car crash
rating have really acted like a 1 star in the crash due to the
defective weld? How many more people are driving around with the
defect welds?