My Supposedly Reliable Toyota Broke On Me Again And Now I Hate This Car So Much I Want To Set It On Fire

I have spent much of my car enthusiast career telling people who need reliable transportation to just buy a Toyota, Honda, or maybe a Mazda if they’re feeling spicy. Generally, these brands have a good reputation for selling cars that just work. So, when my wife told me that she wanted a Smart Fortwo as her daily, I immediately steered her away. Instead, we thought we found a good alternative in the Scion iQ, a car that was designed to be better than a Smart in every way, and from a brand that usually doesn’t mess around with dependability. Unfortunately, it seems we got a bad example, because this car has been a nightmare, a thorn in my backside, and now an item living rent-free in my head. I want nothing more than to see this car out of my life, but as a final middle finger to me, the car broke again just as I was trying to sell it.

My wife, Sheryl, bought her 2012 Scion iQ in late 2023, and it seemed like a solid decision. The BMW E39 wagon that we bought from The Autopian‘s secret designer, the Bishop, was sickly after she drove it a very hard 40,000 miles in a single year. Meanwhile, one of our friends destroyed the Toyota Prius we loaned them by ramming a deer at 60 mph with it.

Sheryl really wanted a Smart Fortwo, but I shot that down because, while Smarts are capable of hitting over 300,000 miles, I know those cars like to break in bewildering ways. She took my advice and decided to get another Toyota. After all, while our Prius was terribly boring to drive, it was the most bulletproof car that we owned. In what seemed like a stroke of genius, Sheryl decided that she’d get the Toyota version of a Smart, the Scion iQ. Sure, it has a Scion badge on it, but this is a Toyota, and one built to be better than a Smart in every conceivable way. I approved of the purchase. It was a Toyota; what could go wrong? After 70,000 hard miles, a lot, apparently.

If you’re new to my series of articles on the Scion iQ, I’ll try to make the backstory on why I hate this car pretty quick. If you’re a regular reader, skip ahead!

A Short Honeymoon

At first, the iQ was everything we needed it to be. Everyone thought it was cute and novel. Many people didn’t even know that Toyota built a Smart-like car. Most just assumed it was a Smart. The car also seemed rather solid. It had 67,000 miles on the clock, and the only problems we had were with the car’s steel wheels bending after hitting Chicago-style potholes. Mechanically? It was solid. We trusted the iQ so much that, in 2024, we drove most of Route 66 in it.

But it was during the return drive from Route 66 that our first problem began to crop up. The first was a terrible CVT whine just as we were making headway around the Grand Canyon. The iQ sounded like it had a massive supercharger on it, and transmission response became a bit sluggish. We replaced the CVT juice after getting home, and the whine went away … for 10,000 miles.

The whine now comes back every 10,000 miles, and then gets loud by 20,000 miles. We then replace the fluid and start the process all over again. The local Toyota dealers and the few local independent mechanics willing to work on the car say the CVT is unrepairable, and that the CVT will basically either blow up tomorrow or last the rest of the life of the car. Either way, when it dies, the fix is to replace the whole thing.

Our biggest complaint during the Route 66 expedition was that the car didn’t have cruise control. While Smart offered factory cruise control for its city car, Toyota did not. But the aftermarket picked up the slack, and so we got a cruise control unit installed. It then failed less than a year later, causing non-stop limp modes and then eventually taking the throttle-by-wire accelerator pedal with it. By my count, the pedal then died two or three more times, and the cruise control unit died one more time. I lost count. Weirdly, the third cruise control unit has been working flawlessly.

To be fair to Toyota, this isn’t a fault of the car’s design or dependability. The cruise control was a poorly-made aftermarket part, and it took three tries to get one that wasn’t faulty.

It’s Tiring To Work On

Toyota had to engineer new, scaled-down components, and then decided to stack them in the engine bay. Honestly, it’s pretty brilliant how Toyota scaled everything down and fit it in there. I’m still impressed every time I open the hood, which is frequently, unfortunately. Working on a Smart is relatively straightforward. Spark plugs on a Smart? Give me 10 minutes. But on the iQ? In order to fit four seats into a space barely larger than a Smart, Toyota had to get weird with packaging.

The result of that engineering is that maintenance sort of just sucks. Want to change the spark plugs? Cool, remove the windshield wipers, cowl, header panel, the airbox, and the intake manifold. It took us an hour to get to the plugs. One of the whole points of buying a tiny car is that it’s supposed to be cheap and easy to operate. The official spark plug replacement process in an iQ takes so long that local Toyota dealers quote $800 for the job. Ouch! The car is also so obscure that some local mechanics won’t touch it.

But wait, there’s more! Sheryl and I have been fighting a losing battle against rust. This car has lived its entire life in salt states, and that’s bad enough for any car. But worse is how the iQ’s design seemingly invites corrosion. The rear wheel wells have shelves in them that are exposed to the elements and will collect a mountain of road salt if you do not clean them regularly. It seems like there should have been a liner of some sort here, like there is up front, but there aren’t any missing parts. This car shipped new like this.

I’ve also found rust peppering the engine bay, the front subframe, and even hidden under weather seals. I wish I could find the post, but a couple of years ago, I saw an image on Reddit of a Toyota iQ in Japan or Europe with a totally rotted left side rocker. Here’s a thread at the Independent Toyota Owners’ Club showing some impressive underbody rust on one iQ. I can’t say I’m the least bit surprised.

Then there was the fuel economy. The feds say that the iQ should get 37 mpg on the highway. This is true with our example, right until we decide to exceed 75 mph. If we keep up with the rest of traffic, fuel economy dips into the high 20s.

Yet, the most devastating part about the iQ was the weathering of its image. Back in 2023 and 2024, everyone loved the iQ. Then, gradually, everyone began turning on it. In time, the same people who said that the iQ is so cute began hating it with a passion. It wasn’t just random people either, but my wife’s clients, judges, and opposing counsel all began trashing the car. Clients stopped paying her, opposing counsel stopped taking her seriously, and judges even chastised her. One person said that, by driving the iQ, Sheryl was engaging in “performative poverty.” What does that even mean? My own mom even claimed to have lost some respect for my wife.

In February of this year, I gave Sheryl my 2012 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI, and it was an instant upgrade. She’s been getting paid more, has been scoring more settlements, my mom is happy again, and there have been absolutely zero complaints. She’s even been scoring a steady 45 mpg, and the car has zero issues to report. She loves the ride comfort, the quieter cabin, the heated seats, the cargo volume, and, of course, the style. The VeeDub has even been cheaper to run, despite the higher cost of diesel. I somewhat recently bulletproofed the car with a new timing belt, new dual-mass flywheel, new water pump, and flushed cooling system.

Unsurprisingly, Sheryl has not driven or even touched the iQ since February. She’s run so far from the car, even, that she signed the title over to me. This pile of junk is officially my problem now. I’ve been driving it every now and then basically out of pity. But even then, I never drive it longer than 30 minutes or so around town.

The Car Is Giving Me A Huge Middle Finger

Recently, I reached the point of deciding to sell the iQ. I want to open up some space to potentially get a first-generation Audi TT, a Volkswagen Eos, or an Audi A2. My parents, who are tired of dumping fuel into their Ford F-350 and GMC Yukon XL, want the iQ as a cheap going-to-town rig. But I also decided to open the floor for anyone to buy it. Allegedly, the private party value for this car is something like $4,500. But factoring in the rust, the whiny transmission, and so on, I figure getting something like $3,500 or maybe $3,000 or whatever would be fair enough. I’m always open to negotiation.

Problem is, I can’t actually sell this pile right now. Right before I listed the car for sale, I decided to drive it to the beach. I wanted one last adventure with the little guy. About 30 minutes into the drive, I would stop at a red light and, after maybe 30 seconds of idling, the RPM would randomly take a few hundred-revolution dip, but only for a second or two. As I continued, these dips became more pronounced. By around the 45-minute mark or so, the dips would come on multiple times every few seconds. If enough of them hit at once, the engine would just stall out entirely. I have to keep my foot on the gas pedal to keep the engine alive at a light.

The issue isn’t limited to idle. If I cross that 30-minute threshold while on the move, it starts off with a very faint, almost imperceptible hiccup in the driveline. Then, as time goes on, the hiccups become heavier. By 45-ish minutes, the engine begins jerking somewhat violently. It feels almost like the car loses all fuel, but just for a second. Or maybe that a cylinder stops working entirely, but only for a second. After that second, the car recovers and drives like normal for maybe 20 seconds, then does it again.

At first, I thought it was fuel-related. The car was last fueled up in February, so maybe it was bad gas? So, I drained the fuel and topped the car up with fresh gas. This made exactly no change.

When I told Sheryl about this behavior, she reminded me that, even after replacing the spark plugs and coil packs, the car had a somewhat rough idle. Indeed, the car never shut down, and the idle hiccups were never greater than 100 RPM. I figured that, maybe, we accidentally introduced an air leak when futzing around with the intake manifold? The issue was minor enough that it was easy to ignore.

But now the issue cannot be ignored. I cannot sell this car in this condition. I wasn’t even positive I was going to make it home from the beach. I cannot in good conscience let someone drive away in this thing. The infuriating thing is that the issue simply won’t occur until after at least 30 minutes of driving. Try as I might, I cannot get the issue to show up before 30 minutes. The car drives flawlessly until after the 30-minute mark. So I have to invest some real time just to troubleshoot it.

But I also have no idea what’s going on here. I hooked up my scanner and found zero codes. The car doesn’t seem to care that it can’t idle and that it jerks while moving. It even gets 40 mpg between the shudders and jerking.

Long before I started writing about cars, I fixed broken IT equipment. The first step was often to undo any recent changes. A part of me wants to reinstall the old coil packs. They worked just fine. I replaced them prophylactically, thinking it would prevent a future owner or me from having to yank off that intake manifold for a long time. But I also don’t want to tear down the front end again in this summer heat.

One possibility pitched to me by a Toyota mechanic contact was that, maybe, one of the car’s injectors was beginning to go. Sometimes, he told me, injectors will act fine until heated up, then start failing. At the same time, he said, a bad coil might also operate fine until heated up.

So, I’m just not sure where to start here. I want to at least try to diagnose the issue before firing the parts cannon. I dusted off my old Autel deep diagnostic scanner and will hook that up, but honestly, I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking for. But I’m sure at least some of you have dealt with an issue like this before, so I’m hoping to get some great pointers.

A Fire Seems Like A Good Solution Right Now

One thing is for sure, and it’s that I now harbor some ill will towards this car. If a tree fell on it tomorrow, I would dance in the streets. If it randomly caught on fire, I’d feel like some deity lifted some weight off my shoulders. Sheryl says that she doesn’t regret buying the car. It taught her a lot about what she actually wants in a car. It also served its purpose of getting her back on wheels during a bad time. I regret this car. I’m pretty sure I’ve written more articles about this little terror than anything else in my fleet.

Some time ago, I said I never want to buy a Volkswagen Passat TDI again. That happened after owning four of them in a row, and all of them broke in hilariously stupid ways. I don’t even want to touch another Scion iQ for a very long time. To be fair to this car, there are iQs out there with over 300,000 miles and no issues. It seems we just got a bad one, then made it worse with that stupid cruise control. But that doesn’t make me dislike the little paperweight less than I currently do.

I will fix it out of spite, then it’s getting listed for sale the minute I find out the car’s okay. They say that the best days of boat ownership are when you buy it and when you sell it. As it turns out, that applies to this exact Scion iQ, too. Before I set this thing on fire, what should I do to diagnose and fix it?

All photos and top graphic image: Mercedes Streeter