California Lemon Law Lawyer Blog

The 2005-2010 Nissan Frontiers, Pathfinders and Xterras with five speed automatic transmissions may leak coolant into the transmission causing rough shifting. Last October, Nissan extended the warranty on these vehicles to 8 years or 80,000 miles. Nissan blames the problem on a cracked oil cooler tube.

In a NY Times story on its Wheels blog, an expert is quoted as saying, “This is a total failure of the cooler portion of the radiator that is responsible for the cooling of the transmission."

The federal safety agency has at least 200 complaints about transmissions on those vehicles and the Center for Auto Safety has almost 50.

The Center's director Clarence Ditlow states, “It is one of the bigger transmission problems that we see. It is costly and it can cause an immediate failure."

A letter from Nissan to owners notifying owners of the warranty extension talked about the coolant leak, but failed to mention that the leak may cause transmission problems. When challenged on this point, Nissan's spokesman said they did not want to "get too deep into details."

Over past years, thousands of owners have submitted reports of problems with their cars to www.carcomplaints.com, a site dedicated to exposing trouble spots in cars. The site has now created useful sites on each manufacturer's model cars that have the number of complaints, recalls, government investigations and technical bulletins issued. The data is presented in easily understood graphic form. Each site also has a useful listing of the latest problems reported by brand and model. You may go to www.carcomplaints.com to see the URLs for the sites covering each of the auto manufacturers. Anyone shopping for a new or used car will find these sites useful.

A bill moving through the California Legislature, AB 1215, will require California used car dealers selling junk, salvage or flood vehicles to put a sign on the vehicle warning buyers the car is a junk, salvage and flood vehicles. Prior to any sale, the dealers will also have to provide the buyer a vehicle history report from the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System (NMVTIS). NMVTIS is an electronic database that provides consumers with information about a vehicle's condition and history.

The bill has passed the Assembly and a key Senate committee. The car dealers' association is supporting the bill and hence is almost sure to be approved by the Senate and Governor.

The rationale for the bill is that athough diligent purchasers can arguably already search and retrieve vehicle history information from Carfax.com or Autocheck.com, the proposed disclosure will assist consumers who are on a car lot comparing two vehicles side by side. If one vehicle has a warning (and one does not), the consumer will be able to make an informed decision after asking the dealer to see a copy of the NMVTIS report.

The sponsor of the bill, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS), explained that

vehicles with a history of prior major damage tend to be
unsafe, and worth far less than similar undamaged vehicles.
For example, they may lack air bags, have bent frames that
make them prone to tipping over in an emergency braking
situation, or have electronic systems that are corroding and
will inevitable malfunction because the vehicle was
submerged in flood water. In fact, whether a vehicle was
totaled or not may be the single most important piece of
information that car buyers need to know, in order to make
an informed comparison between two otherwise similar
vehicles. . . . AB 1215 promises to be a vitally important
next step toward curbing salvage and rebuilt wreck frauds
and ensuring that NMVTIS fulfills its potential for
benefiting the public.

The NPR program Car Talk with Tom and Ray Magliozzi, aka Click and Clack, is the most popular car show on the radio. Ever wonder how you get through to talk about your car? It is not a matter of just calling 1-888-227-8255 and waiting to get connected to hosts according to a Wall Street Journal article in its February 18, 2009, edition.

About 10,000 people call in to Car Talk's answering machines every day. Some 1,000 callers manage to leave messages. Interns screen the messages and a producer makes follow-up calls to about 25 persons. The producer looks for a dozen articulate folks with a sense of humor and an interesting, current car problem that is straight forward enough to be discussed on the air. They also look for diverse "voices," (urban, rural, young, old, male, female) and an assortment of issues.

Contrary to some rumors, the brother do not have advance information on the callers or their car problems. The Car Talk website is www.cartalk.com.

Years ago, manufacturers and their dealers were forever telling owners with problem vehicles this "we've never seen this before" or "the car meets manufacturer's specifications" when the truth was that the manufacturer knew that the problem of which the owner was complaining was both real and to be found in other vehicles of the model. However, owners now communicate with each other about problems with their model vehicle using Internet forums. The upshot is that an owner with a problem vehicle may quickly discover that other owners are having the same problem.

In discovery in one of our class actions against a U.S. auto manufacturer, we obtained a copy of an internal memo that illustrates this development. The author made reference to an Internet forum on the particular truck model in question and then commented, "We can't lie to consumers anymore."

Some of the leading forums are automotiveforums.com, automotive.com, edmund.com/insideline, and rv.net. To find a forum specific to your model vehicle, just search using your model vehicle and the word forum. There seems to be a forum for every make and model vehicle.