AtWhatMileage
Transmission · 5 owner reports

Complete transmission failure on the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee

Only 3 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 5
With an odometer reading 3
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $2,800–$8,000
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 43rd

When complete transmission failure gets reported

There are 5 reports of complete transmission failure on the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 98,000 miles. It is the 43rd most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 3 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 87,000 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $2,800–$8,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 18 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2011, at a median of 200 miles, and latest on the 2006 at 135,000 miles.

By volume the 2014 carries the most reports, with 29; the 2012 has 5. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 36k
  2. 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  4. 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 56k
  5. 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 64k
  6. 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 30k
  7. 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 84k
  8. 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 18k
  9. 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 24k
  10. 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 135k
  11. 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 80k
  12. 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 70k
  13. 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 200
  14. 2012 (this one) 87k
  15. 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 32k
  16. 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 3k
  17. 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 66k
  18. 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 104k
  19. 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 19k
  20. 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 14k
  21. 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 460
  22. 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 64k
  23. 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  24. 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure 13k
  25. 2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

Also reported on the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee

Other electrical problem

430 reports median 63k

Alternator or charging system failure

257 reports median 75k

Fuel pump failure

218 reports median 76k

Other brake problem

186 reports median 40k

Other engine problem

139 reports median 76k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 5 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 5 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does complete transmission failure happen on the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee?

Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 85,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is complete transmission failure on the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee?

5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed