Toyota 4Runner

Which Toyota 4Runner years should you avoid?

Going by 5,875 owner complaints filed with NHTSA, the Toyota 4Runner years to avoid are 2003, 2004, 1997, 2000 and 2005.

• 2003696 complaints, 7.3× a typical 4Runner year, most often about the body and frame.
• 2004678 complaints, 7.1× a typical 4Runner year, most often about the body and frame.
• 1997261 complaints, 2.7× a typical 4Runner year, most often about the suspension; and 2.4× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (2 fires, 35 crashes, 5 deaths).
• 2000483 complaints, 5.0× a typical 4Runner year, most often about the body and frame.
• 2005425 complaints, 4.4× a typical 4Runner year, most often about the body and frame.

6 more years cleared the same bar; they are marked in the table below.

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.

Too new to judge: 2025 and 2026. Complaints take a few years to arrive, so a new model year looks better than it is.

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 →