Looking at 2013 v-matic 1.6 auto

[MatrixProtein]

Hi guys,

As the title says I'm looking at one of these cars. Looking to trade in a 2010 mmt which has been nothing but awful and headaches.

Just to be sure even though this car has the flappy gear shifts, it is a CVT and not a semi auto right? I want nothing to do with semi autos ever again.

Also read about cvts and how they are weak etc but wanted to know anyone's experience on this particular car. I'm looking at a car which appears clean with a service history on about 35k miles.

Any advice appreciated

 

Sent from my CLT-L09 using Tapatalk

[FROSTYBALLS]

For the UK market, the auto option for the second generation Auris (Dec 2012 onwards) was a CVT

[Konrad C]

Search the forum and you will hardly find any issue with CVT. The larger Avensis and RAV4 has CVT in their line ups and again hardly any post regarding faults. 
Look at the following post from Alan333 on the subject - 

Don't compare Toyota's CVT transmission with Nissan's which is reliable. With my quick search, Ask Honest John seems to have lot of posts regarding Nissan's CVT!
And Toyota hybrids which use CVT, and Prius's used as PHV and taxis do high mileages.
I hope this helps you make a decision on the car, but make sure everything else about any car you look at is okay! 

[TonyHSD]

Toyota cvt s are fine indeed, but if you live in London and looking into automatic Toyota look at hybrid ones is best option, theirs eCVT transmissions are completely different from the standard CVT and are more reliable, but either way you will be better than MMT, semi autos has always been a pain. 

Good luck. 

[mrfixer]

I spend a good portion of the year in Thailand where Toyota are number one in sales and most cars are autos. Almost every Bangkok taxi is a Corolla Altis 1.6 and many are autos. From chatting to taxi drivers I think it is fair to say that CVTs are not as well liked as the older conventional autos, both because of the way they drive and because they tend to fail earlier. I noticed a lot of the newer taxis are manual now. When the CVTs fail it seems like nobody can repair them. At least in Thailand there  is a ready supply of fairly cheap secondhand units (either sourced locally from the plentiful supply of wrecks, or imported from Japan). I don't know what the repair situation is in UK but my gut feeling is you would struggle.

Certainly the Toyota (Aisin) CVTs seem more reliable than the Jatco units fitted to Nissans etc - the Nissan Teana CVTs had a bad reputation for failure and did a lot of damage to Nissan sales in Thailand. It seems like CVTs fitted to low power cars (c.1.3 litre) have fewer problems than those fitted to larger engined cars such as the Teana and Camry. At the end of the day CVTs rely on metal-metal friction drive and once slippage occurs it seems that things get serious pretty quickly.

Be aware that the V-Matic engines can suffer with failure of the Valvematic unit - if you are unlucky enough to have it fail then its a £1300 repair thanks to the way Toyota parts are priced in UK.

[nielshm]

There are so things that you never should do with a CVT. It's VERY important that your car holds still, when moving the gearstick from reverse to drive. Any movement is transferred to the steelbelt, and if it slips, bad luck. 

The steelbelt is hold in place with a very high pressure, something like 3-4 tons. That generates a very high friction between the cone shaped pulleys and the belt, and the car can drive. 

Since you're looking at a 6 year old car, you don't really know what of driving the CVT has been used to. Slow and gentle, or from A to B as fast a possible? 

[Konrad C]

On 8/21/2019 at 7:18 AM, Konrad C said:

Search the forum and you will hardly find any issue with CVT. The larger Avensis and RAV4 has CVT in their line ups and again hardly any post regarding faults. 
Look at the following post from Alan333 on the subject - 

Don't compare Toyota's CVT transmission with Nissan's which is reliable. With my quick search, Ask Honest John seems to have lot of posts regarding Nissan's CVT!
And Toyota hybrids which use CVT, and Prius's used as PHV and taxis do high mileages.
I hope this helps you make a decision on the car, but make sure everything else about any car you look at is okay! 

I should have said don't compare Nissan's CVT with Toyota's reliable CVT. Nissan's is not the same as Toyota's.