For every car sold, owners filed more complaints about the 2019 Armada than about the typical Armada year: 1.5 times as many.
Safety complaints filed by owners in the first three years, per 1,000 sold.
1.5 times this nameplate’s own median
Counted from 29 complaints filed in the first three years, of 78 ever. 95% lower bound 0.57.
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 | 0.70 | 11 | |
| 2010 | 0.62 | 9 | |
| 2011 | 0.21 | 4 | |
| 2017 | 0.64 | 23 | |
| 2018 | 0.50 | 17 | |
| 2019 | 0.90 | 29 | |
| 2020 | 0.23 | 6 |
No phrase appears often enough in these complaints to describe them reliably.
Failures cluster early, which is the signature of how the car was built rather than of wear. A low-mileage example has not yet passed the risk window.
That is not a clean bill of health, and not a criticism of the agency: investigations open for many reasons and complaint volume is only one of them.
For every car sold, owners filed more complaints about the 2019 Armada than about the typical Armada year: 1.5 times as many. The typical year is the median across its model years.
The parts owners named most often in complaints filed to date: Electrical System (42), Unknown Or Other (20), Service Brakes (14).
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 Armada years: for every car sold, owners filed more complaints about the 2019 Armada than about the typical Armada year: 1.5 times as many.
No guide we read covers the Armada.
Example records behind this page, each on NHTSA’s own site: