2016 BUICK CASCADA — Complaint #1982537
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about VISIBILITY:GLASS, SIDE/REAR filed April 11, 2024
NHTSA complaint #1982537 (ODI reference 11582433) concerns a 2016 BUICK CASCADA and was filed on April 11, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 8, 2024. The report was geocoded to Minnesota based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as visibility:glass, side/rear, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same BUICK CASCADA cohort independently describe similar visibility:glass, side/rear failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2016 BUICK CASCADA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The rear window on the Cascada is known to separate from the convertible top material, likely due to an insufficient amount of primer used during the assembly process, which creates stress points allowing the material to separate from the glass. Once this bond has started to fail, it is eventually going to lead to the glass completely falling off the car. It is likely that the glass separating could render the rear defrost inoperable, too, decreasing visibility. NHTSA bulletin 17-NA-216 describes this problem; why was no recall ever issued?
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1982537 |
| ODI Number | 11582433 |
| Date Filed | April 11, 2024 |
| Failure Date | April 8, 2024 |
| VIN | W04WT3N56GG |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.