2017 Toyota Sienna
This year drew an ordinary 152 complaints for a Toyota Sienna — the model's median is 172. What they were about is the unusual part: 22.4% of them mention transmission, against 1.9% across the other years of this generation.
Generation 2 of the Toyota Sienna, which began in 2011 and ran to 2020. Everything below compares this year against the others in that generation, not against a different car wearing the same name.
NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.
| Complaints filed | 152 |
|---|---|
| Median for this model | 172 |
| Involving a crash | 13 |
| Involving a fire | 4 |
| Recalls | 10 |
| NHTSA crash rating | 5/5 |
| EPA combined | 21 mpg |
What the complaints were about
- transmission — 22.4% of this year's complaints, against 1.9% across the other years of this generation (11.7×).
- zjc — 14.5% of this year's complaints, against 2.7% across the other years of this generation (5.3×). Owners wrote it as: zjc, support, program, customer support.
- awd — 9.2% of this year's complaints, against 2.2% across the other years of this generation (4.3×). Owners wrote it as: awd, check awd, awd system, drive sienna.
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.
What owners wrote
Loss of power highway speeds, jerky shifting, “sealed” transmission leaking fluid. Check engine light and service required light. I have noticed poor performance with this vehicle before and reported it to the dealer to no avail. Toyota has enacted “customer s…
My 2017 Sienna has whine noise coming from transmission, the vehicle was inspected by Toyota dealership and confirmed that the noise is coming from Transmission. Toyota has already issued a recall for the 2017 Sienna with Transmission UA80 under program ZJC. M…
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.
Recalls for this year
- 19V532000 STEERING Fixed free of charge.
- 19V410000 SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC Fixed free of charge.
- 19V503000 EQUIPMENT Fixed free of charge.
- 19V553000 SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC Fixed free of charge.
- 17V831000 EQUIPMENT Fixed free of charge.
- 17V295000 TIRES Fixed free of charge.
- 18V211000 SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC Fixed free of charge.
- 20V682000 FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE Fixed free of charge.
Showing 8 of 10. The rest are on NHTSA's site.
How this was worked out
Every year of the Toyota Sienna 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.
Own a 2017 Toyota Sienna? What happened to yours?
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