2016 Toyota Tacoma
This year drew an ordinary 323 complaints for a Toyota Tacoma — the model's median is 185. What they were about is the unusual part: 10.2% of them mention wiring, against 3.5% across the other years of this generation.
First year of a new generation. The Toyota Tacoma was redesigned for 2016. A first year carries problems nobody has found yet, and they are found by the people who buy it — which is worth knowing before you become one of them.
NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.
| Complaints filed | 323 |
|---|---|
| Median for this model | 185 |
| Involving a crash | 4 |
| Involving a fire | 4 |
| Recalls | 4 |
| NHTSA crash rating | 4/5 |
| EPA combined | 20 mpg |
What the complaints were about
- wiring — 10.2% of this year's complaints, against 3.5% across the other years of this generation (2.9×). Owners wrote it as: wiring, heater, seat heater, harness.
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
I NOTICED WHEN MY DRIVER SEAT HEATER WAS IN THE "ON" POSITION, THE SEAT WAS NOT HEATING UP. ELECTRICAL WIRING/CONNECTOR FOR THE HEATED SEAT MODULE LOCATED UNDER THE DRIVER SEAT OVERHEATED OR ARCED CAUSING THE CONNECTOR (S) TO MELT POSING A SAFETY/FIRE HAZARD A…
The driver's side seat heating element failed due to a defective seat heater amp. When independently researching the failure, which could have simply been an unconnected wire, I discovered the amp and wiring had an electrical seizure and the wiring had burned…
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.
Recalls for this year
- 17V425000 STRUCTURE Fixed free of charge.
- 17V356000 ENGINE Fixed free of charge.
- 17V285000 POWER TRAIN Fixed free of charge.
- 15V656000 AIR BAGS Fixed free of charge.
How this was worked out
Every year of the Toyota Tacoma 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 2016 Toyota Tacoma? What happened to yours?
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