Tl* the contact owns a 2003 toyota matrix. while driving 15 mph, the engine stalled and the check engine warning indicator illuminated. the vehicle was able to restart on the second attempt; however, the failure recurred. the first time the vehicle was diagnosed the dealer was unable to determine the failure and disengaged the check engine warning sensor. the failure recurred and the vehicle was taken to a second dealer. it was diagnosed that the seal on the fuel cap failed and needed to be replaced. the vehicle was repaired. the vin was excluded from nhtsa campaign number: 10v384000 (engine and engine cooling). the failure continued. the manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. the failure mileage was approximately 145,000.
I was slowly pulling into my garage (in the basement of my house), gradually braking as i had done many times before. i was stopping the vehicle in its usual position when the engine suddenly began racing and the car accelerated forward. it struck some shelves i had against the wall of the garage, crumpling both the shelves and the front of the car's hood. everything happened so fast at that point that i am not sure just what happened, but i ended up with the car stopped up against the garage wall and the car in park. i believe i threw it into neutral, then applied the brake since it was still moving, then tried to back up, and finally put it into park. the car was declared a total loss by my insurance company. i experienced the same problem of sudden acceleration when stopping several times previously, but none of those incidents caused any damage. in each of those situations i was able to get the car into neutral, stop it with the brake, and continue on my way. in this instance there was not enough space ahead of me to do that successfully. i know that a number of incidents of unintended acceleration of a toyota matrix have already been reported for a number of different model years.