The quietest Odyssey we track at 90 complaints — but check the steering-rack recall, because that one can take the steering with it.

The clearest owner-paid pattern on the 2023, and it carries over from the 2021. Water finds its way in — through the rear hatch area and body seams — and reaches the tailgate electronics. One owner names the part that failed: the power tailgate control unit, part number 74970-THR-A12, dead at approximately 46,000 miles and three years old. Others report water simply getting into the boot, and one describes the rear liftgate opening and closing by itself while driving and while parked, with children and groceries in the back. No recall covers any of it, so it is your bill, and it means sealing the leak as well as replacing the unit. This is easy to check and easy to miss: lift the boot floor and the rear carpet, feel for damp, look for tide marks and staining around the tailgate seal, and sniff for mould.

Auto idle-stop switches the engine off when you stop and is meant to restart it when you lift off the brake. On the 2023 owners report it failing: 'our auto idle randomly will shut the entire van off, leaving us stranded without being able to go for 15 to 30 seconds until we can get it restarted'; another reports the engine failing to restart in heavy traffic; another that the system struggles to restart at lights, idles roughly and has already killed one battery, replaced under warranty. What makes this year different is that Honda is visibly looking at it: the company sent dealers messages saying it 'is searching for certain 2023-2025 Odysseys, Passports, Pilots, and Ridgelines with a customer complaint of a no auto re-start condition after going into an auto idle stop', and asking them to inspect the vehicle or collect specific parts before attempting any repair. That is an open investigation — not a recall and not a warranty extension — so do not expect a free fix today. Sit through a dozen stop-and-go cycles with the feature left on.

Recall 23V-431 replaces a faulty connector on the MOST network — the fibre-optic link between the audio and display systems — that can leave the rearview camera image blank, and it covers Odysseys from 2018 all the way to 2023. It is free, with owner letters mailed in July 2023. The reason it earns its own entry on this year is that several 2023 owners report the fix not holding: one states the remedy was performed in August 2023 and has since failed; another that the camera and centre display still go black and that 'previous recall 23V431000 did not fix problem'; a third reports the display blacking out intermittently from December 2024. Others describe cracking and flickering sounds alongside the blank screen. So a completed recall entry against this campaign is not the end of the conversation. Reverse the van and watch the camera come up, and run the infotainment for several minutes listening for crackle and watching for a blackout.

The tail of the 2023's complaint file. The windshield camera that runs Honda Sensing — the failure that dominates 2018 through 2020 — still appears here, though far less often: owners report failed monocular cameras taking collision mitigation, lane-keeping assist, adaptive cruise, lane-departure mitigation and auto high-beams down together, one after a windshield replacement. It is not covered by any campaign. Two airbag and restraint campaigns are open: 26V-332 covers a front-passenger seat weight sensor that can crack and short, and 23V-858 is the large in-tank fuel-pump recall that can otherwise stall the engine. Single reports worth a physical check rather than alarm: a front seat slide lever detaching on its own, a seat belt that would not release and kept tightening on a child, and a side mirror shattering at low speed. One further campaign, 25V-877, applies only to vans fitted with Vantage Mobility wheelchair restraints and cannot apply to a standard van.

The case for this year, stated plainly. The connecting-rod-bearing recall, where the engine can seize and dealers replace the whole motor, ends at 2019. The timing-belt recall ends at 2019. Both sliding-door recalls — the latches that could let a door open while driving, and the handle cables that could freeze — end at 2019 and 2020 respectively. The airbag-software recall 26V-227, which covers curtain airbags deploying unexpectedly, ends at 2022 and does not reach this year. The nine-speed transmission of the launch years is long gone in favour of a ten-speed, and a dealership technician who services these vans reports few failures on either. Ninety complaints against the 2018's 946 is not a rounding difference; it is a different vehicle in service terms. Check the steering recall, check for water, and this is the least troublesome Odyssey in the range.