Ask an expert

I noted in a recent Herald column in their motoring magazine where one of the correspondents "Jack" advised to be wary of a car with a CVT transmission. A fairly large number of the cars I have been looking at are described as having this type of transmission. What is your advice

CVT transmissions are known to give problems and be expensive to repair, particularly on cars up to the mid 2000's, although we're keeping a close eye on later cars with CVT's too as maybe they're just not old enough yet to fail.
Models known to be particularly problematic were Honda Jazz, Nissan Primera, Rover 200, but the CVT problem is not limited to these models.
Preferably, find a car with a conventional automatic transmission and try to steer clear of CVT's, particularly with older cars.

hi andrew, my parents bought a grey-import 2006 Toyota Auris (1500cc , Toyota Super-CVT) , are those as problematic as the other cvt's ? As I don't want them to have an expensive repair bill anytime soon.
It appears the engine (1nz-fe) and transmission is exactly the same as the NZ-New Corolla Wagon , am i right ?

it has done 56k and the tf-fluid has not been changed and we cannot spot any dipstick in the engine bay.

To our knowledge, no NZ New Corolla had a CVT, even the wagons with the 1.5 litre engine. We are aware that some of the domestic Japanese market cars had CVT's.
At 56,000km if your parents car has been treated well, not driven hard or used for towing, it should sitll have a decent amount of life left in it. However, like all CVT's, if trouble occurs they can be expensive to repair and the preference would be for a model with a conventional transmission.
There will be a workshop procedure for checking the fluid level, so there is no dipstick on this model.

Hi Andrew, I've just checked the Toyota website.
It appears their Auris is fitted with this same engine-transmission combo:

http://www.toyota.co.nz/NewVehicles/Models/Passenger/Corolla/GX+5Dr+Wagon/1.5L/CVT/Overview/

I will remind them to get it checked out when it hits close to 100K . Hopefully the cvt fluid is much more expensive than normal autos.

thanks for your help!

You are correct in regards to models currently offered by Toyota New Zealand. The latest 1.5 Corolla wagon offered here is a Japanese domestic market model with a CVT transmission. Up until 2009, TNZ brought in an Export market model, which was predominantly manual, but automatic models used a traditional 4 speed auto.
I think you will find that the fluid for the CVT is more expensive than a conventional ATF.