Model years › GMC Yukon Denali

2012 GMC Yukon Denali

Complaints about this year name dashboard far more often than the model's other years — 43% of them, about 107× the usual rate of 0.4%.

NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.

What the complaints were about

• airbag — 38.5% of this year's complaints, against 0.6% across the model's other years (61.6×).
• cracked — 39.8% of this year's complaints, against 0.8% across the model's other years (48.5×).
• dashboard — 42.7% of this year's complaints, against 1.6% across the model's other years (27.2×).

Words owners used for the same problem are counted together, so a fault written four different ways is measured once. Grouped by which complaints they appear in, not by a list anyone wrote in advance.

Also unusual this year

• cracked — 40% of complaints, 99× usual
• airbag — 38% of complaints, 96× usual
• dash — 41% of complaints, 35× usual

What owners wrote

THE DASHBOARD IS CRACKED AROUND THE PASSENGER AIRBAG AND I THINK THIS IS A SAFETY HAZARD.

CRACKED DASHBOARD ON TOP OF THE INSTRUMENTAL PANEL AND THE FRONT PASSENGER AIRBAG LOCATION.

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.

Own a 2012 GMC Yukon Denali? What happened to yours?

Loading comments…

How this was worked out

Every year of the GMC Yukon Denali was compared against its own history rather than against other cars, which removes popularity and age from the answer — a common car draws more complaints at equal reliability, and an older one has had longer to accumulate them. A year is flagged when it drew at least 2.5× this model's median and at least 50 complaints.

This is a fault record, not a review. Nobody files a federal complaint to say the car was fine, so it shows what tends to go wrong — not whether owners liked it, and not whether it is a good car.

Source: NHTSA complaints, recalls and investigations, retrieved . Look this vehicle up directly on NHTSA's site to check anything here.

Every year of the GMC Yukon Denali →