Toyota C Hr
Problems & Worst Years

Toyota's C-HR built a short but rocky reputation around its transmission almost immediately. Of the 232 total complaints logged for the 2018 model year, transmission bearing failure alone accounts for 61 filings, with a closely related whining noise from the front end adding another 60 — together the two account for more than half of everything owners reported. Layer in 29 more reports of outright transmission failure at low mileage, 22 describing abnormal acceleration sounds, and 20 citing a faulty continuously variable transmission, and the picture for 2018 is unmistakable: the CVT is the car's weak point, not an occasional annoyance.

The 2019 model year settled down sharply in volume, dropping to just 41 total complaints, but the concentration tells its own story — 33 of those 41 are CVT bearing failure again, meaning the same underlying issue persisted into the second model year even as owner reports thinned out. A handful of battery complaints and reports of jerking and loss of speed round out the rest, alongside two windshield-cracking complaints unrelated to the drivetrain. Two recall campaigns, 19V244 and 19V877, were opened during this window.

Notably, neither year carries any safety-severity complaints in this dataset — the failures reported are costly and disruptive rather than crash-related, a meaningfully different risk profile than a car with airbag or brake safety flags. Anyone cross-shopping a C-HR should budget for CVT service history and ask pointedly about whining noises or hesitation during a test drive, since that's precisely what recurs across both years.

As always, these figures reflect what owners chose to file with NHTSA rather than a true failure rate, and the newer of the two years simply hasn't had as much time on the road to accumulate reports — a thorough pre-purchase inspection and a look at service records will tell you more than the model year by itself.