2025 Toyota 4Runner
This year drew an ordinary 54 complaints for a Toyota 4Runner — the model's median is 64. What they were about is the unusual part: 37% of them mention brakes, against 6.7% across the model's other years.
First year of a new generation. The Toyota 4Runner was redesigned for 2025. A first year carries problems nobody has found yet, and they are found by the people who buy it — which is worth knowing before you become one of them.
NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.
| Complaints filed | 54 |
|---|---|
| Median for this model | 64 |
| Involving a crash | 2 |
| Involving a fire | 1 |
| Recalls | 1 |
| NHTSA crash rating | 4/5 |
| EPA combined | 22 mpg |
What the complaints were about
- brakes — 37% of this year's complaints, against 6.7% across the model's other years (5.5×).
- squeal — 20.4% of this year's complaints, against 5.1% across the model's other years (4×). Owners wrote it as: squeal, loudly, cold, tsb.
- brake — 24.1% of this year's complaints, against 9.2% across the model's other years (2.6×).
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.
What owners wrote
Brakes squeak/squeal very loudly and often, no matter if it’s cold, rainy, hot or humid. It was only squeaking/squealing when applying the brakes while backing up but now starting to squeak/squeal when applying the brakes while moving forward. Seems to be gett…
The brakes in the new 2025 4runner howl and squeal extremely loudly. I avoid braking slowly to try to avoid the noise. The TSB was completed last month: TSB-0046-25. It did not work. The noise is back, and worse. I am worried I am going to get into an accident…
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.
Recalls for this year
- 25V595000 ELECTRICAL SYSTEM Fixed free of charge.
How this was worked out
Every year of the Toyota 4Runner 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.
Own a 2025 Toyota 4Runner? What happened to yours?
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