Trusted nameplates with a bad model year
Civic, Outback, Forester, Sienna. Names dealers bid on without a second look. Each has model years where owner complaints about the engine or transmission run at two to four times the nameplate's own normal.
Every dealer carries a list in their head of cars that are safe to buy. Civic. Outback. Sienna. Mazda3. The names sell themselves, the money is predictable, and nobody ever got fired for bringing home a clean Honda.
The list is right most of the time. That is what makes the exceptions expensive. A nameplate earns its reputation over fifteen years and loses it for two or three, usually around a redesign or a new transmission, and the reputation does not update. The car still looks like a safe buy on the run list. The history report is still clean. The only place the bad years show up is in what owners reported afterward.
We went looking for exactly that: model years where the share of NHTSA owner complaints about the engine, transmission or fuel system is high, inside a nameplate whose typical year is ordinary. How the share is calculated.
Honda Civic, 2014 and 2015
| Model year | Drivetrain share | Complaints | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 Honda Civic | 26%† | 52 of 320 | No elevated signal |
| 2014 Honda Civic | 55%† | 125 of 290 | High |
| 2015 Honda Civic | 63%† | 205 of 387 | High |
| 2016 Honda Civic | 15% | 149 of 1,081 | No elevated signal |
This is the clearest case in the data. The 2013 Civic is an ordinary car by this measure. The 2014 and 2015 are not: more than half of everything owners filed about those two years concerns the drivetrain, and most of it is filed under power train. The 2014 model year is when the Civic's automatic became a CVT. The redesigned 2016 drops straight back to a low share.
On a run list, those four cars are the same line with a different first digit. At the block they bring similar money. They are not similar risks.
Subaru Outback, 2010 through 2014
| Model year | Drivetrain share | Complaints | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 Subaru Outback | 52%† | 148 of 360 | High |
| 2011 Subaru Outback | 62%† | 288 of 651 | High |
| 2012 Subaru Outback | 62%† | 146 of 292 | High |
| 2013 Subaru Outback | 49%† | 121 of 296 | High |
| 2014 Subaru Outback | 41%† | 67 of 208 | High |
| 2015 Subaru Outback | 18% | 89 of 509 | No elevated signal |
The Outback's typical year sits in the mid teens. The generation that arrived for 2010 does not: five model years in a row come back high, peaking above sixty percent for 2011 and 2012, with the complaints concentrated in the power train. That generation also introduced Subaru's CVT. The 2015 redesign returns to normal.
The Legacy, which shares the platform, shows the same pattern from 2010 through 2013, on smaller samples.
Subaru Forester, 2011 through 2015
| Model year | Drivetrain share | Complaints | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 Subaru Forester | 25%† | 53 of 262 | No elevated signal |
| 2011 Subaru Forester | 65%† | 73 of 147 | High |
| 2012 Subaru Forester | 46%† | 38 of 105 | High |
| 2013 Subaru Forester | 53%† | 32 of 77 | High |
| 2015 Subaru Forester | 45%† | 226 of 613 | High |
The Forester is a different problem. The 2010 is ordinary. From 2011 the share jumps and stays up for most of the next five years, and here the complaints are about the engine, not the transmission: sixty of the 147 complaints on file for the 2011 name the engine, and engine is still the largest category for 2015. That matters for how you inspect it. A transmission pattern is something you feel on a drive. An engine pattern is something you check with the hood up and the dipstick out, and ask about in service records.
Toyota Sienna, 2017
| Model year | Drivetrain share | Complaints | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 Toyota Sienna | 43%† | 60 of 153 | High |
Toyota minivans are as close to a sure thing as the used market has. The 2017 is the outlier: a high share, led by power train complaints, in the year the Sienna received a new eight-speed automatic. The sample is smaller than the others on this page, so treat it as a reason to drive the car properly and ask about transmission service or software updates, not as a reason to pass.
Ford Explorer, 2020
| Model year | Drivetrain share | Complaints | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 Ford Explorer | 23% | 67 of 294 | No elevated signal |
| 2020 Ford Explorer | 52%† | 598 of 1,210 | High |
| 2021 Ford Explorer | 44% | 178 of 424 | High |
Not a nameplate with a spotless record, but a useful example of how sharp the line can be. The 2019 is the last year of the old Explorer and scores as ordinary. The 2020 is the first year of the redesign: over twelve hundred complaints, more than half of them drivetrain, and a long recall list. First model years of a full redesign are where this pattern shows up most often across the whole dataset.
Mazda3, 2012 and 2013
| Model year | Drivetrain share | Complaints | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 Mazda Mazda3 | 20%† | 18 of 132 | No elevated signal |
| 2012 Mazda Mazda3 | 42%† | 75 of 226 | High |
| 2013 Mazda Mazda3 | 40%† | 28 of 117 | High |
| 2014 Mazda Mazda3 | 29% | 38 of 138 | No elevated signal |
A milder case. The 2012 and 2013 cross into high where the years on either side do not, with complaints split between power train and engine. Those are the years Mazda brought in its new engines and transmissions. Worth knowing, because the Mazda3 is a car buyers trust and dealers rarely check.
What to do with this
Do not stop buying these nameplates. A 2015 Civic with a documented transmission service history, bought at the right money, is a fine car to own. The point is to stop treating the name as the inspection.
Check the year, not the badge. The pattern almost always tracks a redesign or a new powertrain, and it almost always ends with the next one. One model year in either direction can be a different car. The compare view in the tool puts two years side by side, and the trend line on each report shows the years around it.
Let it set your inspection. The report tells you whether owners complained about the engine or the transmission, and quotes what they said. That is your test drive plan. Here is how to run a whole sale sheet through it the night before.
Use it on trades too. The customer trading a 2014 Outback believes they are handing you a Subaru, which is to say a safe car. They are, mostly. Here is how to put the model year's record into the appraisal without guessing.
A caution about this list
These are base rates from owner complaints, not failure rates. A complaint share says what owners who complained were complaining about. It does not say what fraction of the cars failed, and popular cars generate more complaints of every kind. The tables above refresh with the data each month, so the figures may move a point or two. What has not moved, in any refresh so far, is the shape: a trusted name, a bad stretch of years, and nothing on the run list to tell them apart.
Check the actual car, free.Paste the VIN. One report is free, no card, and it shows the complaint pattern for that year, make and model.
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