2019 RAM Promaster: what breaks, and at what mileage

The failures owners actually file about

Owners have reported 29 named failure modes on the 2019 RAM Promaster, and the three most-reported carry 31% of everything filed, which is an unusually even spread for one model year.

Other powertrain problem leads with 13 reports and about 0.2 per 1,000 vehicles.

Other engine problem follows with 6 reports, median 5,000 miles.

Complete transmission failure follows with 5 reports.

By system, the reports fall mostly into transmission (20), engine (11) and brakes (8).

How bad it is when it goes

Across the named modes, 5 mention a crash. Those are the words owners used in their own complaints, and NHTSA does not verify them, but they are the closest thing in this data to a measure of what a failure actually did.

The average severity weight across every report on this year is 3.81, 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, other engine problem at $300–$4,000, complete transmission failure at $2,800–$8,000 and parking brake failure at $250–$1,300. Dealer labour, a seized bolt or a part that is no longer made can push any of these past the top of its range.

48% 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 2019 RAM Promaster draws about 1.4 per 1,000 vehicles, which puts it in the 75th percentile of complaint rates among 2019 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 55,167 vehicles. If the true number is twice that, every rate on this page is half what it says; the ranking against other 2019 vehicles, which is what the risk score uses, is far more robust than the rate itself.

Recalls on the 2019 model year

NHTSA has issued 9 recall campaigns covering the 2019 RAM Promaster, affecting an estimated 169,648 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 equipment adaptive/mobility:wheelchair restraints/securement, engine and engine cooling:cooling system:radiator assembly, back over prevention: sensing system: camera and power train:automatic transmission:internal:park pawl. 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.

One caution about reading these together: a recall usually raises the complaint count for the same part, because owners who read about it go and file. The mileages stay informative; the counts get noisy.

Better and worse years of the same car

High risk for a 2019 — 181st riskiest of the 245 2019 vehicles we can rate. The comparison is always within the same model year, so an older car is never penalised for having had longer to break.

Across the 11 model years of this car that carry enough reports to score, 2023 comes out best at 63 and 2014 worst at 75, with 2019 itself at 73.

If the model year is negotiable, 2023, 2024, 2020, 2016 and 2015 score lower than 2019 by a margin worth acting on. Same body, same engines, different luck — usually a supplier change or a mid-cycle fix, which the complaint data can show but never explain.

Within the 2014–2020 generation specifically, 2020 is the strongest year at 67 and 2014 the weakest at 75.

The limits of complaint data

77 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 77 reports, 18 carried an odometer reading, so the mileages here describe 23% 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".

The failure modes are assigned by software reading the owner's own words, which is accurate in bulk and wrong in individual cases. A mode with a handful of reports may contain a misfiled one.

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.