I picked up the car on Friday, and noticed a weird noise coming from behind the passenger compartment. I’d noticed on the previous day when I test drove the car, but only heard the noise when I was on the freeway and not when I was driving on local streets afterwards.

Anyway, I jacked the car up and started jiggling the wheels. I could shake the rear left wheel much more than the right. I also noticed that tranny oil was leaking from the left axle. Ugh.

I’m going to take the car to Toyota this week and see if they can isolate the problem. Hopefully they can fix it. Hopefully it won’t be too expensive.

I still would advocate that people buy used cars, but now I’m going to start recommending that people spend the $75 and take it to a mechanic to put the car up and check out everything from underneath.