I've had something similar a while back, the car got a bit swirly in the back and the ABS light went on. Turned the car off and it went away, hasn't been back.

It's nothing.

Just kinda curious as to why the clutch would not grab just because it is overheated? The 'teeth' of the clutch should still grab even though it is hot, unless they all have been melted or worn off - is that what you're getting at?

Or is there some sort of monitoring device the car that won't let the clutch hold if it gets too hot for safety purposes?

My take is that if the material on the clutch disk is burnt off or "glazed" to the point it would no longer create friction between the pressure plate and flywheel ...... it won't transmit the torque coming from the engine going to the transmission.

Most manual transmissions don't have any monitoring device to measure heat at the clutch. It's pretty much left up to your sensors ..... of the clutch is engaged and the engine is spinning and it's in gear, but your car ain't going nowhere .... the clutch may be slipping. If you smell something burning during the process, maybe the clutch is slipping.

humfrz

Clutches fade when overheated, just like brakes. They are inevitably quite smelly/smokey at this point. In a 200 hp sort of car with an OEM street clutch, a couple of seconds of slipping clutch at full throttle will do it.

But I've never heard of a clutch that faded (& subsequently recovered) so badly it wouldn't engage at all. Usually if they get to the point that they won't make the car go, they are done. OP's experience is a bit mysterious.

I'm sure the clutch is ok. No burnt smell. I've tried to recreate the event in the parking lot and got similar reaction though the TC goes back off when the car comes to a complete stop and I have no problems with taking off afterwards.

The only thing I can figure what happened was that the ECU was flipping out and may have continuously sent the kill-throttle signal or got hung-up on itself (maybe the drive by wire.)

It wasn't a cold start. I had warmed up the car, drove 1 mile dropped a letter in the post and returned to my vehicle (never keyed off.)

This makes sense to me.

There are times I miss a direct, un-assisted connection between right pedal and throttle, middle pedal and brake, steering wheel and rack.

As we have all found out recently, Toyota programing quality is not all it could be?!