2009 Dodge Dakota: what breaks, and at what mileage

What owners report breaking

Owners have reported 11 named failure modes on the 2009 Dodge Dakota, and the three most-reported carry 39% of everything filed.

Other powertrain problem leads with 5 reports and about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles.

No-start or intermittent start failure follows with 2 reports, median 125,000 miles.

Airbag inflator rupture follows with 2 reports.

By system, the reports fall mostly into transmission (5), engine (3) and adas (3).

Severity, and what it costs

The average severity weight across every report on this year is 4.57, where a stalled engine or a failed airbag weighs many times more than a rattling trim panel, and a figure this high means the reports are dominated by failures with safety consequences rather than annoyances. The weighting is set out in full on the methodology page.

What the top failures cost to put right, as editorial estimates for an independent US shop rather than figures from NHTSA: other powertrain problem at $400–$4,500, no-start or intermittent start failure at $200–$1,800, airbag inflator rupture at $0–$0 and cruise control failure at $200–$1,400. Dealer labour, a seized bolt or a part that is no longer made can push any of these past the top of its range.

39% of the reports on this year sit in the engine, transmission, drivetrain or cooling systems — the four where a repair bill is usually four figures.

How often, against how many were built

Scaled by an estimate of how many of these cars exist, the 2009 Dodge Dakota draws about 0.4 per 1,000 vehicles, which puts it in the 74th percentile of complaint rates among 2009 vehicles we can rate.

That denominator is the weakest number on the page and it is fair to say so plainly. Rate per 1,000 uses a fleet-size estimate derived from recall paperwork for this exact model year. It is a lower bound.

The working figure is 64,559 vehicles. If the true number is twice that, every rate on this page is half what it says; the ranking against other 2009 vehicles, which is what the risk score uses, is far more robust than the rate itself.

Recalls on the 2009 model year

NHTSA has issued 5 recall campaigns covering the 2009 Dodge Dakota, affecting an estimated 174,276 vehicles. A recall is a different kind of evidence from a complaint: it is the regulator and the manufacturer agreeing that something has to be fixed, and the fix is free for as long as the car exists.

The campaigns cover air bags:frontal:passenger side:inflator module, air bags:frontal:driver side:inflator module and power train:driveline:differential unit. Whether the work was actually done on the car in front of you is a question only the VIN can answer, and the manufacturer or NHTSA will answer it free.

Recalls also distort complaint counts. Publicity about a campaign reminds owners that complaining is possible, so reports for a recalled component often spike after the recall rather than before it.

How 2009 compares with the other years

High risk for a 2009 — 233rd riskiest of the 295 2009 vehicles we can rate. Because the ranking is against the same model year only, age cancels out of it.

Across the 16 model years of this car that carry enough reports to score, 2008 comes out best at 63 and 2002 worst at 74, with 2009 itself at 66.

No other year of this model scores meaningfully better than 2009, so if this generation is what you want, the year is not the lever.

Within the 2009–2011 generation specifically, 2009 is the strongest year at 66 and 2010 the weakest at 70.

Where these figures stop being useful

23 owner reports; fleet size estimated from this year's own recall paperwork. Every count on this page is therefore a floor: it is the number of owners who went to the trouble of filing with a federal agency, which is a small and self-selected fraction of the owners who had the fault.

Of those 23 reports, 15 carried an odometer reading, so the mileages here describe 65% of the sample rather than all of it. Owners also round: readings pile up on multiples of ten thousand, which is why this site publishes "about 90,000 miles" and not "91,438".

Named failure modes come from matching phrases in the complaint text, so a badly worded complaint can land in the wrong bucket. The effect washes out across hundreds of reports and does not wash out across five.

And nothing here predicts what one car will do. These are other people's complaints, filed years apart, on cars maintained by strangers. Read the page as a map of where this model year has previously gone wrong, then have the specific car in front of you inspected.