Model years › Nissan Armada

2017 Nissan Armada

Complaints about this year name start far more often than the model's other years — 30% of them, about 5× the usual rate of 5.6%.

NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.

What the complaints were about

• start — 29.6% of this year's complaints, against 5.6% across the model's other years (5.3×).
• lights — 24.7% of this year's complaints, against 8.5% across the model's other years (2.9×).
• used — 11.1% of this year's complaints, against 3.1% across the model's other years (3.6×). Owners wrote it as: used, safety hazard, medical, couldn get.

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.

Also unusual this year

• bci malfunction — 15% of complaints, 37× usual
• switch — 11% of complaints, 28× usual
• battery — 16% of complaints, 8× usual

What owners wrote

BCI Malfunction has occurred twice with the vehicle. I almost always have my children in the car with me. The first time it wouldn’t start again after I shut the engine off. Now the malfunction lights remain on. The brake switch was replaced and isn’t the issu…

I have had to replace the brake switch twice in this vehicle and it is under 35k miles. Other Nissan models have had this recalled. Once it begins to fail, the car will not start because it doesn't detect the brake is depressed. It also sets off the BCI Malfun…

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.

Own a 2017 Nissan Armada? What happened to yours?

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How this was worked out

Every year of the Nissan Armada 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.

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