2016 Honda Accord9th gen (2013–2017), facelift year

Updated 2026-09-02NHTSA counts read on this date — 597 complaints. They rise over time.

Headlights at Three Years, Static at Nine: The 2016 Accord Breaks Two Expensive Things

Two things dominate this model year and neither is mechanical.

116 filings are about the exterior lighting — 74 of them name the daytime running lights. The LED strip goes dark, and because it is built into the headlight, the fix is a whole headlight assembly. 27 filings put that at $1,000 or more.

100 filings say the stereo blasts static. 24 of those say it happens with the radio switched off. 16 say the only way to stop it is to pull over and shut the car down.

They are not the same era of the car’s life. The lighting filings land in 2018 and 2019, when these cars were three and four years old. The static filings land in 2025 and 2026, when they were nine and ten. No filing is in both groups, and no recall covers either one.

Owners have filed 597 complaints with NHTSA about the gasoline 2016 model year. Honda sold 355,557 Accords in calendar year 2015 and 345,135 in 2016 — that figure covers the whole Accord line including the hybrid — and 2016 cars were sold across both of those years. 597 complaints against a few hundred thousand cars is not a failure rate, and 597 filings are not 597 owners.

One note on scope: the hybrids are out. NHTSA files this car under four model names and the names don’t split cleanly. Every filing here was matched to a gasoline car by its VIN. On this model year that removed one.

The basics

The facelift year for the ninth generation. Honda changed four things: the front and rear styling, LED daytime running lights across the range, a new touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and Honda Sensing on the option list. Same two engines as before: the 2.4-liter four with a CVT or a six-speed manual, and the 3.5-liter V6 with a six-speed automatic.

Both of the failures on this page arrived with that facelift. Two of the things Honda changed that year were the headlight and the head unit, and this page is about those two. One broke early and one broke late.

The DRLs also went from nothing to standard across the range that year, which puts more of them on the road to fail. That is a second reason a count can jump, and the record cannot separate it from the first.

Specs

Displacement and cylinder count are from NHTSA’s vPIC catalog, which holds what the manufacturer submitted. Fuel economy is EPA, city / highway / combined, in mpg. EPA rates two automatics for each engine, so both are here.

What owners filed

Sections below are sorted by count. Each complaint is counted once, under a two-step rule. Step one: if a filing names a specific failure — the power steering, a head gasket, a fuel pump, the collision mitigation system, the daytime running lights — it goes to that section. Step two: everything left over gets sorted by NHTSA’s own component labels, in a fixed order — driver assistance, steering, brakes, fuel, engine, transmission, electrical, lighting, air bags, body.

The same rule applies to every year in this series. The cross-year table on the model page uses NHTSA’s labels alone, so a section here can come out bigger or smaller than the matching row on that page.

The sections below add up to 468. The remaining 129 are spread across the smaller categories, and the last section below breaks them out.

The static doesn’t have a section. Owners file it as an electrical problem, an infotainment problem or a noise, so it lands wherever the sentence fits: 68 in electrical, 5 in engine, 3 in driver assistance, 1 each in brakes and fuel, and 22 in the thin categories. The 100 is counted across the whole record, so it does not add onto anything below it.

The starter is gone. It is 112 filings on the 2015 car and 200 on the 2014. Here it is 17, which is 2.8 percent of the record. Whatever ended it, it ended with this model year.

Engine type comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing. 555 of the 597 decode to one of the two engines — 372 are the 2.4 and 183 are the V6, so the V6 is 33.0 percent of the filings that decode. That is the highest V6 share of the five years in this series that had a V6 — the tenth generation drops it after 2017 — and it matters here because one of the four campaigns is V6 only.

Electrical — 145

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged electrical system.

The largest section, and 68 of the 145 are the static described above. 26 name the battery, 17 are about the touchscreen freezing or going blank rather than making noise, 11 name the battery sensor and 11 name the starter.

ODI 11751311:

“The speakers will suddenly blast an extremely loud static noise, even when the radio is turned off. The only way to stop it is to pull over and turn the vehicle off. Eventually, the problem became so severe that even after turning the car off and restarting it, the speakers would continue blasting the static noise. The sound is so loud that it makes it difficult to think clearly and creates a serious distraction while driving, posing a significant safety hazard.”

56 of the 100 name a speaker. 34 describe the noise as unbearable, deafening or loud enough to hurt. 12 say the dealer could not reproduce it or could not fix it.

28 say the fix they were offered is a new head unit. 15 give a price for it, all of them $1,000 or more and running as high as $5,000. Five say the part was on backorder.

The 2017 car has 49 filings saying the same thing. Before the facelift the count is four on the 2015 and one on the 2014. The record can’t say whether it’s the same part.

Exterior lighting — 116

Counted as filings that name the daytime running lights, plus those NHTSA tagged exterior lighting.

This section is 8 filings on the 2013 car, 9 on the 2014 and 5 on the 2015. It is 116 here. 74 name the daytime running lights and 72 name an LED.

28 say the entire headlight assembly has to be replaced. That is the expensive part: the LED strip is not a bulb and there is nothing to unscrew.

ODI 11205081:

“TOURING MODEL DAYTIME RUNNING LIGHT (DRL) LED STRIP IS 70% UN-LIT ON ONE HEADLIGHT. THIS APPEARS TO BE AN EXTREMELY COMMON PROBLEM AND REQUIRES REPLACEMENT OF THE ENTIRE HEADLIGHT ASSEMBLY, DEALER PART COST $945, INSTALL NOT INCLUDED. FROM MY RESEARCH IT APPEARS THESE BURN OUT EARLY AND OFTEN AND DRL’S ARE LISTED AS A SAFETY FEATURE. THIS IS NOT RIGHT AND A SOLUTION NEEDS TO BE PROVIDED. HONDA CANNOT EXPECT PEOPLE TO REPLACE LIGHTS EVERY COUPLE OF YEARS AT THAT COST.”

39 filings give a dollar figure. Two of those figures are what the car cost rather than what the repair cost. The rest are quotes for the work: 27 are $1,000 or more, and the highest for a single side is $1,500. Several owners were quoted for both sides at once.

24 say one side went out. 21 mention both. 13 say it happened after the warranty ended.

The 2017 car has 15 filings here. The record does not say why this model year has so many more, and it does not say whether the part changed.

Fuel system — 42

Counted as filings that name a fuel pump or fuel in the oil, plus those NHTSA tagged fuel system or fuel and propulsion.

22 name the fuel pump and 19 describe a stall. Two campaigns touch this section, and one of them only reaches the V6.

Steering — 37

Counted as filings that name the power steering or the EPS, plus those NHTSA tagged steering.

13 name the power steering or the EPS. On the 2013 car that section is 514 filings and 324 name the power steering; four model years later it is 37 and 13.

Five name the ABS modulator. That part is 114 filings on the 2014 car and 14 here record-wide.

Engine — 36

Counted as filings that name a head gasket or overheating, plus those NHTSA tagged engine or engine and cooling.

Five name the starter and four describe a stall. Nothing in here groups into a single failure.

Brakes — 24

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged service brakes or parking brake.

Six name the ABS modulator and four are about the pedal.

Transmission — 21

Counted as filings that name the CVT, the transmission or a driveshaft, plus those NHTSA tagged power train.

Four name the CVT.

Driver assistance — 18

Counted as filings that name the collision mitigation system, lane keeping or adaptive cruise, plus those NHTSA tagged forward collision avoidance or lane departure.

This is the first Accord you could order with Honda Sensing, and one filing names it. Three name lane departure or lane keeping, two the ABS modulator.

Body and structure — 17

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged structure.

Five are about a door or the trunk and five are paint or rust.

Air bags and belts — 12

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged air bags or seat belts.

Two mention Takata or an inflator. One says a bag did not deploy. The campaign below arrived after most of these were filed.

The rest is thin

129 filings. NHTSA tagged 53 of them unknown or other, 15 visibility/wiper, 10 vehicle speed control, 7 wheels, 7 seats and 6 tires. Nothing else reaches five.

Recalls

Four campaigns reach a gasoline 2016 Accord. Three of them are shared with earlier years in this series. The fourth arrived four months ago.

The seat weight sensor

26V332000 — May 2026, and it is the newest thing on this page. The front passenger seat weight sensor can crack and short circuit.

“Air bags that deploy unintentionally during a crash increase the risk of injury.”

Dealers replace the sensor. Owner letters were mailed July 7, 2026. It covers 2016–2022 Accords and most of the Honda and Acura line, and Honda’s own text calls it an expansion of an earlier campaign, 24V064000.

It is recent enough that a car on a lot today may not have had it done, which makes it the campaign to check by number first.

V6 only: the fuel pump

19V060000 — January 2019, covering 2015–2017 Accords with the 3.5-liter V6, plus the Acura TLX and MDX. Honda says particulates in the fuel can stick to the inside of the fuel pump and reduce how well it works.

“Reduced fuel pump performance can result in an engine stall, increasing the risk of crash.”

Dealers reprogram the fuel injection control unit and replace the pump if they need to.

A third of the filings on this car decode as V6s, more than any other year that offered one. If the car you are looking at is a V6, this campaign is yours to check.

The battery sensor and the other fuel pump

17V418000 — June 2017. Water can get into the case around the battery sensor. Honda says that can short it out and start a fire. This is the last model year it covers.

23V858000 — December 2023, the fuel pump again, covering 2013–2023 Accords and most of the Honda and Acura line. The pump can fail and stall the engine while driving. Owner letters went out September 6, 2024.

Nothing covers the headlights and nothing covers the stereo. Between them that is 216 of the 597 filings, and no filing is in both.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

NHTSA gives the 2016 Accord sedan five stars overall, four in the frontal test, five on side impact and five on rollover. The coupe scores five across all four.

Nothing in the complaint record argues with that. Owners do not file about crash ratings.

The 2.4 with the CVT returns 30 mpg combined, five better than the V6 automatic.

What the complaint curve says

2015    2     2020   38     2025   88
2016   57     2021   27     2026   48
2017   60     2022   24
2018   82     2023   42
2019   88     2024   41

This curve has two humps and they are different parts. 170 filings arrived in 2018 and 2019, and 89 of them are the lighting. 136 arrived in 2025 and 2026, and 74 of them are the static. In between, the years 2020 through 2022 run 38, 27 and 24.

A complaint count going up can mean owners got a recall notice, not that the cars got worse. Neither hump has a campaign behind it. The lighting has no campaign at all, and the seat sensor letters went out in July 2026, after the second hump had already built.

What the second hump does line up with is age. These cars turned nine in 2025. The first hump doesn’t — three years is early for a headlight, and 13 of those filings say the warranty had already run out.

Complaint databases collect complaints. Nobody files to say the headlights still work. You can’t compare these numbers across models unless both sets were counted the same way.

If you’re looking at one

Ordered by how much it hurts if it goes wrong, not by how many people filed.

Check 26V332000 by number. The seat weight sensor, letters mailed July 2026. Run the VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls — it only lists recalls that are still open, so a clean result means either the work was done or the car was never covered. Any Honda dealer’s service department can pull the completion record by VIN, and it’s free.

Sit in the car with the engine running and the audio off, and give it a while. Seven filings say how long they had to wait and the answers run from five minutes to thirty, so a short listen proves little. The noise comes whether the audio is on or not. 100 filings name it.

Start the engine, release the parking brake, then get out and look at both headlights from in front of the car. The daytime running lights only come on with the car running, and you cannot see them from the driver’s seat. The failure is often partial — one filing describes a strip 70 percent unlit — so look along the whole strip. If it is dark or patchy, the repair is a headlight assembly. 27 filings put that at $1,000 or more; 13 of those are quoting one side and 14 are quoting both.

If it’s a V6, check 19V060000. The fuel pump campaign that only covers the V6. It is badged on the trunk lid and the listing will say 3.5L.

Ask whether 17V418000 and 23V858000 were done. The battery sensor case and the fuel pump. Honda’s stated consequence for the first is a fire and for the second an engine stall while driving.

Numbers worth writing down

The 2017 car is next. It is the last of this generation, and the biggest thing on it is the backup camera.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 598 complaints across the four model names NHTSA files this car under, of which one is a hybrid and is excluded; quoted above by ODI number
• NHTSA recall API — four campaigns; quoted from the campaign summaries and consequence text
• NHTSA vPIC — engine and electrification, decoded from the VIN attached to each filing
• NHTSA safety ratings — 2016 Honda Accord
• EPA fuel economy — city / highway / combined
• GoodCarBadCar Honda Accord sales figures

Complaint counts and quotes come from NHTSA’s public database, retrieved September 2, 2026; each quote lists its ODI number so you can look it up. Engine type comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing — 555 of the 597 decode to a 2.4 or a 3.5. 33 filings carry no VIN at all, and the remaining 9 don’t decode. Recall applicability depends on the VIN and, for the fuel pump campaign, on which engine the car has — check yours at nhtsa.gov/recalls. This summarizes what owners reported. It isn’t buying or repair advice.