Toyota Avalon

Which Toyota Avalon years should you avoid?

Going by 3,404 owner complaints filed with NHTSA, the Toyota Avalon years to avoid are 2007, 2006, 2008, 2001 and 2003.

• 2007243 complaints, 2.0× a typical Avalon year, most often about the throttle and acceleration; and 2.9× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (1 fire, 47 crashes, 4 deaths).
• 2006360 complaints, 3.0× a typical Avalon year, most often about the throttle and acceleration.
• 2008349 complaints, 2.9× a typical Avalon year, most often about the headlights.
• 20012.7× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (1 fire, 34 crashes, 3 deaths).
• 2003293 complaints, 2.4× a typical Avalon year, most often about the airbags.

Better bets: among years old enough for a low count to mean something, the 2019 and 2014 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 →