Acura TL

Which Acura TL years should you avoid?

Going by 3,118 owner complaints filed with NHTSA, the Acura TL years to avoid are 2004, 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2002.

• 2004551 complaints, 3.7× a typical TL year, most often about the airbags.
• 19993.0× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (4 fires, 17 crashes, 2 deaths).
• 2003391 complaints, 2.6× a typical TL year, most often about the transmission.
• 2005388 complaints, 2.6× a typical TL year, most often about the airbags.
• 2002333 complaints, 2.2× a typical TL year, most often about the transmission.

Better bets: among years old enough for a low count to mean something, the 2013 drew the fewest complaints without an unusual share of serious ones.

How this is worked out: each year is compared with a typical year of the same model, which takes most of the difference in sales out of it, and its share of serious failures is compared with every other car of the same model year, because older cars were complained about differently. A year needs 25 complaints to be judged at all. Complaints are unverified owner reports. Full method →