Federal complaint record · Hyundai Elantra · model year 2012

2012 Hyundai Elantra

Owners submitted 650 federal complaint reports about this model year, placing it at the 73th percentile for complaint intensity within its 2010 to 2014 compact sedan cohort. The largest reported component group is engine. Sample sizes and limitations are shown below.

Engine · 15% · group n = 140Electrical · 14% · group n = 126Airbags · 14% · group n = 124Brakes · 11% · group n = 98Steering · 10% · group n = 88
650
Complaint records on file
62,152
Median mileage at the reported problem · 422 complaints reported mileage
15%
Of classified component reports name engine · group n = 140
73th
Complaint-intensity percentile in a cohort of 39 model years

Engine · 2 in ten classified complaints

Where this record concentrates

All failure files
Component group 01 · Engine15%

Engine reports

Hyundai Elantra · model year 2012

Reports in this group140
Share of classified reports15%
Component groups on file6
Open the failure files

Adjacent model years · same badge, different data

The complaint signal has a shape

Compare model years
2011
0.2complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
431 matched incidents
This car
2012
0.3complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
650 matched incidents
2013
0.5complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
1,309 matched incidents

The line compares submitted complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years, not failures per 1,000 cars. Vehicle-years use compiled US sales, a 0.25 prior-calendar-year plus 0.75 current-calendar-year model-year allocation, and the shipped survival curve. Rates appear only where estimated vehicles in operation are at least 5,000.

From the record · recurring narrative clusters

What recurring complaint clusters describe

How clusters are built
Brake performance · 109 reports

Reports describe braking performance concerns

Cluster 1 of 32012 Hyundai Elantra
Airbag concerns · 94 reports

Reports describe airbag warning or deployment concerns

Cluster 2 of 32012 Hyundai Elantra
Steering effort · 75 reports

Reports describe steering effort or control concerns

Cluster 3 of 32012 Hyundai Elantra

Cluster summaries paraphrase recurring symptoms reported to NHTSA. They are aggregate descriptions, not individual verbatim reports.

Records through 2026-07-19Published 2026-08-02 · Updated 2026-07-19

Published model-year records · free · no login

Check the next car before the test drive

NHTSA consumer complaint records can reveal recurring patterns across published model years. MotorCensus summarizes those records as one complaint-signal index, with a 95% interval and sample size, updated with each data snapshot.

Browse all Hyundai records How the index works