AtWhatMileage
Wheels · 7 owner reports

Tire blowout or tread separation on the 2003 Toyota Camry

2 crashes 1 injury 3 of the 7 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Only 5 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 7
With an odometer reading 5
Reports per 1,000 built 0.2 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 60%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 3
Typical repair $200–$1,500
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 27th

When tire blowout or tread separation gets reported

There are 7 reports of tire blowout or tread separation on the 2003 Toyota Camry, 5 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 38,000 miles. It is the 27th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 5 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 25,300 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

Of these reports, 2 a crash and 1 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $200–$1,500 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 17 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 2,100 miles, and latest on the 1999 at 160,000 miles.

By volume the 2002 carries the most reports, with 10; the 2003 has 7. 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.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Vehicle experiencing problems with continental tire equipment.*mr tire failure with three of the continental tires while traveling along the same road. The first failed tire couldn't be repaired. The second was repaired at ntb. *ph *nm

1,700 miles NHTSA complaint 448502 filed 2004-01-08

On a 2003 toyota camry the right rear tire blew out driving at highway speeds. On the outside of the tire, it has completely separated at the sidewall and has partially separated on the inside. There is no sign of any puncture in the tire. The tire is a bridgestone potenza p215/60r16 94v other numbers on the tire: e92m2 34364exbm25816-2 dm419e DOT 0bx8 pfa 1603 d03l. *ak

4,100 miles NHTSA complaint 457234 filed 2004-02-27

While driving (2003 toyota) 60 MPH on interstate hwy with moderate amount of traffic, the left, rear tire blew out and completely seperated. Potenza re92 is the oem vehicle difficult to control, went into major skid. *ak

25,300 miles NHTSA complaint 457512 filed 2004-03-01

Also reported on the 2003 Toyota Camry

Other speed control problem

217 reports median 33k

Other engine problem

86 reports median 79k

Other brake problem

57 reports median 28k

Other body or interior problem

40 reports median 50k

Head gasket failure

39 reports median 115k

ABS module or sensor failure

30 reports median 8k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 7 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 7 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 tire blowout or tread separation happen on the 2003 Toyota Camry?

Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 25,000 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 tire blowout or tread separation on the 2003 Toyota Camry?

7 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.2 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