For every car sold, owners filed about as many complaints about the 2013 Avalon as about the typical Avalon year. Among the 6 Avalon years with enough complaints to compare, owners filed the fewest about the 2009 (0.89 per 1,000 sold) and the most about the 2008 (2.13).
Safety complaints filed by owners in the first three years, per 1,000 sold.
1.1 times this nameplate’s own median
Counted from 67 complaints filed in the first three years, of 157 ever. 95% lower bound 0.72. Not counted: 2 complaints that reported only that a recall repair was unavailable, not a failure.
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 | 2.13 | 91 | |
| 2009 | 0.89 | 31 | |
| 2010 | 0.80 | 22 | |
| 2011 | 1.15 | 33 | |
| 2012 | 0.24 | 7 | |
| 2013 | 0.94 | 67 | |
| 2014 | 1.01 | 70 | |
| 2015 | 0.36 | 23 | |
| 2016 | 0.20 | 11 | |
| 2018 | 0.42 | 14 | |
| 2019 | 1.37 | 42 | |
| 2021 | 0.32 | 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.
The VIN an owner files names the engine, which places 139 of this year’s 157 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.5 L 6-cylinder | 90 | 10% | too few mileages |
| 2.5 L 4-cylinder hybrid | 49 | 6% | 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. 18 complaints are not in the table: no usable VIN, an engine vPIC could not decode, or an engine with fewer than 25 complaints.
Electrical overstress
For every car sold, owners filed about as many complaints about the 2013 Avalon as about the typical Avalon year. Among the 6 Avalon years with enough complaints to compare, owners filed the fewest about the 2009 (0.89 per 1,000 sold) and the most about the 2008 (2.13). The typical year is the median across its model years.
The parts owners named most often in complaints filed to date: Structure (27), Unknown Or Other (26), Vehicle Speed Control (25).
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 Avalon years: for every car sold, owners filed about as many complaints about the 2013 Avalon as about the typical Avalon year.
Among years with enough complaints to compare, the 2009, at 0.89 per 1,000 sold. Every Avalon year, ranked.
No guide we read covers the Avalon.
Example records behind this page, each on NHTSA’s own site: