Too few owners filed complaints about the 2016 A3 in its first three years to say whether it is a better or a worse year than the others.
Safety complaints filed by owners in the first three years, per 1,000 sold.
too few complaints to rank against its other years
Counted from 16 complaints filed in the first three years, of 121 ever. 95% lower bound 0.24.
This year’s generation (2015–2020) drew 0.57 complaints per 1,000 sold taken together, against 1.51 for the 2004–2013 generation.
The model year carries far more information than the badge, so this is the comparison that matters. The bar is how many complaints each rate rests on.
| Model year | Per 1,000 | Complaints | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 2.94 | 14 | |
| 2009 | 0.70 | 3 | |
| 2010 | 3.07 | 16 | |
| 2011 | 1.07 | 7 | |
| 2012 | 0.29 | 2 | |
| 2015 | 1.00 | 29 | |
| 2016 | 0.47 | 16 | |
| 2017 | 0.44 | 12 | |
| 2018 | 0.33 | 7 |
Phrases over-represented in these complaints compared with the same component on every other vehicle. Counts are complaints containing the phrase.
| pods | 13 | 25% |
No clear early or late pattern.
The VIN an owner files names the engine, which places 117 of this year’s 121 complaints. Sales by engine are not published, so these are not rates and say nothing about which engine drew more complaints. What can be compared is what each engine’s owners reported.
| Engine | Complaints | About the engine or fuel system | Of those, before 30,000 miles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.8 L 4-cylinder | 59 | 42% | too few mileages |
| 2.0 L 4-cylinder | 40 | 32% | too few mileages |
Engines as NHTSA’s VIN decoder (vPIC) reads them from the first eleven characters of each VIN. “Turbo” is shown only where every VIN records one; the decoder leaves it blank on many turbo engines. 22 complaints are not in the table: no usable VIN, an engine vPIC could not decode, or an engine with fewer than 25 complaints.
Fuel Leak due to Suction Jet Pump Failure within Fuel Tank (Remedy Effectiveness of Recall 16V647)
Too few owners filed complaints about the 2016 A3 in its first three years to say whether it is a better or a worse year than the others. The typical year is the median across its model years.
The parts owners named most often in complaints filed to date: Air Bags (52), Fuel/Propulsion System (23), Electrical System (20). The phrases they used are listed above.
Complaint records cannot settle that on their own. They count safety problems owners chose to report to the federal government, not every repair. What they do show is how this year compares with the other A3 years: too few owners filed complaints about the 2016 A3 in its first three years to say whether it is a better or a worse year than the others.
No guide we read covers the A3.
Example records behind this page, each on NHTSA’s own site: