Toyota C-series / E-series (C59, E351)

Toyota's transverse five-speed manual transaxles — the older C-series (C50, C59) and the E-series (E351, E353) that replaced it, in the Corolla, Matrix, Solara, Scion xB, and the Pontiac Vibe and Chevrolet Prizm built alongside them.

The Vibe and the Prizm are Corollas, which is the reason this page reaches four marques: a Pontiac owner researching a gearbox fault is researching a Toyota transaxle, and Pontiac's own literature barely exists.

These are among the most trouble-free manual gearboxes on this site, which changes what a symptom means. A vague or notchy change on one of them is the shift cables and their bushings in the great majority of cases — not the gearbox — and that is a cheap repair regularly mistaken for an expensive one.

Where something inside does wear it is the third-gear synchro, crunching on a fast change and nowhere else. A crunch into every gear is the clutch not releasing, which is hydraulic and outside the gearbox.

They take a gear oil, not ATF — the opposite of the AX-15 — and Toyota's specification is thinner than a conventional 80W-90, which is what makes a wrongly filled one notchy when cold.