General Motors’ crossover SUV, the GMC Terrain, was built on the Theta platform and debuted in April of 2009. The 2017 model runs on a 3.6L High Feature LFX V6, running at 301 horsepower, and sold 85,441 units in its debut year.
A big part of the reason we buy SUVs: They’re safer than the average car. An SUV can withstand an accident with a much higher likelihood of keeping everyone inside perfectly safe. The definitely meets that expectation with a full suite of top-of-the-line safety features. And what’s more, it has yet to be recalled even once.
No Recalls?
The industry averages roughly one recall per one car sold. Some carmakers have a slightly better, or slightly worse track record in this regard. The Porsche leads with a 50/50 recall rate, and General Motors recalls around 95 cars for every hundred sold. Volkswagen actually recalls almost twice as many cars as they sell.
For an SUV to have no recalls whatsoever after three years on the road is unusual. The 2016 model had one recall having to do with incorrect labels, and the 2018 has had four recalls so far, relating to fuel pumps, hydraulics and the power train. But the 2017 GMC Terrain hasn’t been recalled a single time.
Recalls are issued when an automaker determines that there is something wrong with the car, or when enough complaints are filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to warrant an investigation, and that investigation finds that the complaints owe to factory defects.
The 2017 Terrain has only nineteen complaints on record with the NHTSA, with over 80,000 units sold in the U.S. There are no investigations on file with the NHTSA, either completed or ongoing.
What are the Complaints?
The complaints listed with the NHTSA cover a number of concerns ranging from the heating system to the transmission. When there are only one or two complaints addressing a specific problem, it may be a fluke or something that happened to the vehicle after it left the factory. In order to conduct an investigation, what the NHTSA is looking for is a pattern. If dozens or hundreds of people are saying that the power steering goes out, then chances are that’s a problem affecting countless other drivers who simply didn’t take the time to register a complaint.
The biggest pattern across these nineteen complaints has to do with the airbags. Eight drivers have noted that the airbags did not deploy during a collision. But it should be noted that only four of these incidents resulted in injury, and none have resulted in a casualty.
This may mean that the airbags are actually functioning as intended. In the movies, airbags pop out of the steering wheel like a gentle pillow for the driver to land on. In reality, airbags produce quite a bit of force. They have a fraction of a second to catch a full-sized adult and keep them from hitting a dashboard just a couple feet away at sixty miles an hour. This means that the airbag system needs to be carefully calibrated to only deploy when absolutely necessary.
This is not to dismiss the complaints issued with the NHTSA, but in the case of a minor fender-bender, an airbag might do a lot more damage by deploying unnecessarily.
In any event, if there is a recall to look out for, it may wind up having to do with the airbags. Some of the complaints listed with the Safety Administration are pretty serious, but they need to see a broader pattern of defective behavior before they can begin an investigation.
If you experience any problems with your 2017 GMC Terrain, whether it has to do with the airbags or something else, be sure to register it with the NHTSA. And don’t worry, you don’t have to wait in line somewhere, you don’t have to call them and be put on hold for a half hour. You can fill out all the requisite information online. You’ll be making the highways safer, and you might get some free repairs out of the deal.
