Silly me. Last year we bought a new car. After a 39 month flirtation with a superb Audi A6 (would have bought the new model had it been available when the lease expired), we settled on a Lexus ES330. Why? Excellent reputation for quality, dependability, service, and modest luxury. There was just one problem.

The Lexus ES330 must rank among the world’s worst luxury car automatic transmissions.

Why did we choose a Lexus? First, the car has an excellent reputation in nearly every area you’d want in a quality automobile. It’s quiet. It doesn’t break (often, anyway). It’s relatively inexpensive to own. Resale value is high.

Second, we owned a Lexus ES300 in the early 1990s and it was a good experience for three years. When the boys became of surfing and driving age, we moved to a large, roomy, beautiful candy apple red Dodge Grand Caravan (with a 26 gallon gasoline tank, and a desire to empty it quickly—and other problems that will limit purchases of Chrysler products in the future).

There was something about teaching 16 year-olds to drive a Lexus that bothered me. Oh, and the unpleasant thought of waxy, sandy surf boards piled on top of sumptuous leather. Reluctantly we parted company with the Lexus.

We took a test drive in the 2004 ES300 model. Excellent. Quiet. Smooth. That led to an order and we waited a few months for the 2005 models to come in to the local dealer.

Yes, I’d read about the lurching transmission problems of the previous Lexus models and was assured they’d been repaired in the new models. In fact, the lurching transmission was not repaired in the early 2005 models.

Every new car drives well for the first few weeks. So did our Lexus ES330. Smooth. Quiet. Predictable.

Then it began. In the first month, I noticed a distinct ‘pause and lurch’ at low speeds. Over the next few weeks, the pause increased in length of time, and the lurch increased in force.

Basically, as the Lexus slows down, the automatic transmission changes gears from 4th, to 3rd, to 2nd, and so on. Somewhere around 1st and 2nd gear, the Lexus can’t figure out where it should be or what it should be doing when you press on the accelerator.

For a few seconds (sometimes, four to six seconds), the transmission just ‘freezes.’ Pressing the accelerator has no effect. The car will not accelerate forward.

Then, once the transmission has figured out that it’s being requested to wake from sleep, the car lunges, lurches forward; and fast enough that your head can snap backwards.

Think of it this way: press on brakes to slow, press on accelerator to move forward, wait, wait, wait, press again, lurch forward quickly, apply brakes again because the lurch forward is too fast.

Is that annoying? Yes. Is it dangerous? Yes, under the right circumstances, it could be extremely dangerous.

During the first service visit to the Lexus dealer, Servco Lexus in Honolulu, I informed the service technician of the problem. He said, ‘Yes, we’re aware of that. Right now, there’s no solution, but I’ll have the mechanic look at it.’

That’s it. Maybe the mechanic ‘looked’ at it and maybe he didn’t. What’s sure is that, a year later, the Lexus still pauses and lurches and nothing has been done to fix it, repair it, improve it, or even notify owners (me) that there’s a solution to the problem.

In the meantime, we have to drive very carefully at slow speeds as the Lexus cannot be depended on to move forward again when the accelerator is pressed.

The Lexus ES330 has the worst automatic transmission I’ve ever experienced in 40 years of driving.

What does Lexus say about their own transmission? Check this little bit of advertising copy from the Lexus web site:

Notice that the Lexus description of the automatic transmission’s performance is different than my description?

That said, after driving the car and studying the situation for awhile, now I fully understand why the transmission works so poorly, though I do not expect Lexus to repair it. Here’s why:

The Lexus that we purchased in 1993 cost about $32,500. Leather. Moon roof. Stereo. Power seats. The works. The 2005 Lexus, comparably equipped (except for automatic transmission) cost about $32,500.

In 12 model years, the price remained essentially the same for a Lexus ES model. Inflation should have caused the price of the car to increase a few thousand dollars over that 12 year period. It did not.

Obviously, Lexus found a way to manufacture a five-speed automatic transmission out of duct tape, barbed wire, and plastic. That saved a few thousand dollars and allowed Lexus to keep the price low.

The only problem with automatic transmissions made of duct tape, barbed wire, and plastic is that they tend to wear out much faster than normal transmissions. Obvious too, is that Lexus seems to think their customers are idiots and would not notice the defective transmission.

I noticed. Maybe I’m not as much of an idiot as Lexus would like to believe.

Oh, I won’t be buying a Lexus again. And I plan to tell everyone I know what I think of the Lexus duct tape, barbed wire, and plastic automatic transmission.