For every car sold, owners filed about as many complaints about the 2012 Passat as about the typical Passat year. Among the 6 Passat years with enough complaints to compare, owners filed the fewest about the 2016 (0.38 per 1,000 sold) and the most about the 2014 (1.69).
Safety complaints filed by owners in the first three years, per 1,000 sold.
0.9 times this nameplate’s own median
Counted from 69 complaints filed in the first three years, of 483 ever. 95% lower bound 0.45.
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 | 21 | |
| 2009 | 0.58 | 12 | |
| 2010 | 1.52 | 18 | |
| 2012 | 0.59 | 69 | |
| 2013 | 1.08 | 122 | |
| 2014 | 1.69 | 174 | |
| 2015 | 0.65 | 57 | |
| 2016 | 0.38 | 29 | |
| 2017 | 0.49 | 33 | |
| 2018 | 0.31 | 16 |
Phrases over-represented in these complaints compared with the same component on every other vehicle. Counts are complaints containing the phrase.
| clock | 66 | 22% | |
| spring | 66 | 22% | |
| clock spring | 64 | 22% | |
| steering wheel | 62 | 21% | |
| recall notification | 57 | 19% | |
| horn | 46 | 16% |
| spring | 34 | 36% | |
| clock | 33 | 35% | |
| clock spring | 32 | 34% | |
| airbag light | 15 | 16% |
Failures arrive late and spread out, which looks like wear. Service history matters more than model year here.
The VIN an owner files names the engine, which places 295 of this year’s 483 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5 L 5-cylinder | 171 | 7% | too few mileages |
| 2.0 L 4-cylinder diesel | 102 | 46% | 21% of 43 |
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. 210 complaints are not in the table: no usable VIN, an engine vPIC could not decode, or an engine with fewer than 25 complaints.
Clockspring failure
For every car sold, owners filed about as many complaints about the 2012 Passat as about the typical Passat year. Among the 6 Passat years with enough complaints to compare, owners filed the fewest about the 2016 (0.38 per 1,000 sold) and the most about the 2014 (1.69). The typical year is the median across its model years.
The parts owners named most often in complaints filed to date: Air Bags (296), Electrical System (95), Steering (46). 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 Passat years: for every car sold, owners filed about as many complaints about the 2012 Passat as about the typical Passat year.
Among years with enough complaints to compare, the 2016, at 0.38 per 1,000 sold. Every Passat year, ranked.
No guide we read covers the Passat.
Example records behind this page, each on NHTSA’s own site: