Honda Complaints by Model Year, and Where They Peak

Honda complaints about the engine climb from 285 in model year 2010 to 1,572 in 2018, then fall to 226 by 2025. That fall isn't proof the cars got better: a 2025 car has been on the road one year and a 2010 car fifteen, so the newest model years have had the least time to accumulate reports. Read every curve on this page with that in mind.

This is a pre-purchase checklist, not a verdict. It's built from 45,995 owner complaints filed with NHTSA against 29 Honda models, 177 model-year combinations with at least 10 complaints each, from the bulk file dated 2026-08-25. It tells you where to point an inspection; it can't tell you how likely any one car is to fail.

Which Honda problems owners file most

Honda complaints by system, model years 2010 to 2025: total mentions, the model year each system peaks in, and the first and last years for comparison. Mentions, not failure rates.
System	Mentions	Peak year	At the peak	2010	2025
Electrical system	8,257	2018	1,101	125	286
Engine	8,056	2018	1,572	285	226
Steering	5,360	2022	935	22	211
Power train	2,918	2015	456	101	55
Fuel/propulsion system	2,705	2018	904	19	55
Forward collision avoidance, automatic emergency braking	2,341	2018	549	0	84

Line chart of Honda complaints naming the engine by model year, rising from 285 in 2010 to 1,572 in 2018 and falling to 226 in 2025 — Honda complaints naming the engine, summed across every model, one point per model year. Counts of reports, not rates.

All Honda complaints by model year

Every system together, one bar per model year. The right-hand end is short partly because those cars are new, not only because they're better.

20105.1% (2,325)

20113.9% (1,797)

20124.2% (1,921)

20136.4% (2,943)

20145.1% (2,365)

20155% (2,303)

20169.5% (4,366)

20179.5% (4,365)

201814.9% (6,857)

201911.1% (5,083)

20205.2% (2,383)

20213.7% (1,714)

20224.6% (2,127)

20234.9% (2,231)

20244.3% (1,979)

20252.7% (1,236)

Which models carry the engine complaints

The Honda vehicles with the most complaints naming the engine, and what share of each vehicle's complaints that system is.
Vehicle	engine complaints	Share of its complaints
2016 Honda Pilot	758	45%
2018 Honda Accord	537	29%
2017 Honda CR-V	527	30%
2018 Honda CR-V	524	25%
2017 Honda Pilot	459	50%
2015 Honda CR-V	243	36%
2019 Honda Pilot	225	25%
2014 Honda CR-V	189	32%

Honda vehicles with the most complaints

The ten Honda model-year combinations with the most complaints on file, and the system named in the most of them.
Vehicle	Complaints	Named most
2018 Honda CR-V	2,122	Engine (524)
2018 Honda Accord	1,853	Engine (537)
2017 Honda CR-V	1,756	Engine (527)
2016 Honda Pilot	1,685	Engine (758)
2013 Honda Accord	1,418	Steering (493)
2019 Honda CR-V	1,081	Forward collision avoidance, automatic emergency braking (255)
2016 Honda Civic	1,073	Steering (435)
2014 Honda Accord	977	Electrical system (365)
2018 Honda Odyssey	965	Electrical system (248)
2019 Honda Odyssey	925	Electrical system (208)

Look any of them up, with every system, in the complaints decoder, and check a specific car's open recalls in the VIN decoder.

What we know beyond the file

The peak is the engine and the year is 2018. Honda owners named the engine 285 times for model year 2010 and 1,572 times for 2018, then 226 times for 2025. Those middle years are the ones our CR-V guide is about, and the CR-V is the model carrying most of it.

honda-crv-2017-2022-oil-dilution

What this page doesn't know

How many were sold. The file counts reports, not cars. A model that sold in large numbers files more complaints than a rare one with a worse record.

How long each car has been out. Older model years have had more years to accumulate filings. A curve that falls after its peak is partly the calendar.

Who filed. Filing is voluntary and uneven, and a recall or a news story sends owners to the form. A quiet model isn't a clean one.

What it cost to fix. Nothing on this page is a repair price; the site's cost articles are censused on specific cars, not on this file.

Sources

NHTSA consumer complaints, FLAT_CMPL bulk file. https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa-datasets-and-apis. The copy counted here is dated 2026-08-25; one complaint is counted once per vehicle, and once per system it names. Baked to assets/data/complaint-lookup.json by tools/make-complaint-lookup.py, the same file behind the complaints decoder and the quarterly report.

Counts of owner reports filed with NHTSA, model years 2010 to 2025, bulk file dated 2026-08-25. Rebuilt with each data refresh. General information about what owners reported, not advice about a specific car.