I was looking at a 2000 Acura TL, and although I haven’t driven it yet, when I searched for “2000 Acura TL problems”, it brought up plenty of references to the transmission issues that they had.
From my quick read, there seems to be a couple of different things that the dealers did when servicing the transmissions under the recall or extended warranty. Many of the posts seem to disagree on what determined whether the serviced transmissions would last or not, or would have to go back in for additional repair/replacement.
Can someone who is familiar with that issue enlighten me? That would be a nice car, but I am not willing to deal with transmission issues if they are more likely than your average car.
Yes, these cars seem to have a higher than average transmission failure rate. At least in my opinion as an independent aftermarket mechanic. But I don’t know that that’s relevant at this point.
The car you’re looking at is almost 15 years old. Anything can happen on a 15 year old car, no matter how well it had been maintained. It’s a nice car. If you drive it and like then buy it and fix it if it breaks.
If you are not willing to deal with transmission issues limit your searching to cars less than 5 years old and less than 100K miles. That should improve your odds.
Here is what I was referring to:
http://honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=2440947
Most of those cars had well under 100,000 miles when the transmissions failed.
My current car has 215,000 miles and so far (knock on wood) has never had a hint of a transmission problem.