The Sentra name has an interesting history. In the U.S., we tend to think of the Sentra as a single brand since 1982, because that’s how it’s been sold to us. In fact, the car that we know as the Sentra was known in Japan as the Nissan Sunny up until 2006. The current Sentra is actually a Nissan Sylphy B17, in the U.S., that is. In certain parts of South America, they’re still driving the Sunny and calling it a Sentra. And in Mexico, the car used to be known as the Tsuru, a Japanese word for crane.
The name was developed by NameLab, a marketing company that specializes in coming up with catchy names for products and services. Sentra was chosen because it reminds you of two other words: Central and sentry, which both bring to mind the idea of security and safety.
Long story short: If you’re driving a 2014 Nissan Sentra, that car is a seventh-generation model, which makes it a rebranded Sylphy.
The 2014 Recall
In total, the 2014 Sentra has five recalls listed with the NHTSA, and they’re all related to the airbag system. In many cases, this points to a single defect that took several recalls to correct, or follow-up recalls to address damages that may have occurred during previous repairs. In the case of the 2014 Sentra, it just turned out that there were a lot of different bugs to work out with the airbags.
In the car’s debut year there was only one recall.
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The Sentra’s first safety recall in the U.S. concerned the airbag’s occupancy sensor system failing to detect someone sitting in the front passenger seat. This meant that the airbag would fail to deploy in the event of an accident.
It is important that your airbag system knows how many people are sitting in the car and how much they weigh. The main concern is that airbags are not intended to deploy when there is a child in the front seat, as the impact of the bag can potentially do more harm than good. But if the system can’t detect when an adult-sized passenger takes a seat, then the risk is that they won’t receive adequate protection in an accident.
The defect was found on March 25, 2014, affecting a potential 989,701 units, including 2013-2014 Sentras as well as Pathfinders, Altimas, LEAFs, Infinitis and NV200s. Starting April 14, 2014, Nissan began making the necessary software updates at their own expense at Nissan dealerships.
Owners were notified to get in touch with Nissan’s helpline at 1-800-647-7261 or to call the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration at 1-888-327-4236.
The 2015 Recall
2015 was, thankfully, another uneventful year for the 2014 Sentra, with just one recall… again relating to the airbag sensor system.
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This October 20, 2015 recall was just like the last: The system failed to detect adult occupants in the front passenger seat. Thankfully, this recall only affected 919 potential units, including 2013 and 2014 Sentras, as well as Altimas, Pathfinders, and Infinitis.
Nissan issued a recall and began making repairs on November 30, 2015.
2016 Recalls
The 2014 Sentra had two recalls in 2016.
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Another airbag problem. This time, the concern was that a seat belt bracket had a tendency to become deformed if used to strap in a child seat. This could result in the detection system reading an adult passenger and deploying the airbag in the event of an accident.
As mentioned above, an airbag deploying when a child is riding in the passenger seat can be just as dangerous, or more so, as the airbag failing to deploy for an adult.
This recall, announced on April 26, 2016, affected an estimated 645,898 potential Sentra units produced between June 4, 2012 and April 9, 2016. Nissan notified owners and began conducting the necessary repairs and software updates on June 13, 2016.
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The 2014 Sentra’s biggest recall yet, this recall affected an estimated 3,296,947 potential units, including 2013-2016 Sentras, as well as Altima, Infinitis, NV200s, Rogues, Muranos, Pathfinders… nearly the entire Nissan lineup, plus the Chevrolet City Express. Once again, the occupant classification system was misreading the passenger seat and failing to deploy the airbags in the event of an accident.
Nissan notified owners and began conducting repairs and software updates on May 31, 2016.
The 2017 Recall
Nissan had one final recall in 2017. There are no further recalls on record with the NHTSA.
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Another airbag problem, starting on April 13, 2017. This time the defect had to do with the frontal airbag inflators not being properly deployed. Many of the previous recalls had been related to the onboard software, where this was strictly a hardware problem, affecting an estimated 30,038 potential units, including 2014, 2016, and 2017 Sentras, and 2015-2017 LEAFs.
Nissan notified owners and began conduction repairs on June 7, 2017.
So the Airbags Work Now?
As long as a car is still on the road, and as long as the auto-maker is still in business, they will keep issuing recalls every time the NHTSA finds there to be something wrong with the car. So in the case of the 2014 Nissan Sentra, no news is good news.
Of course, you never know when there might be another recall, but after three years with no recalls, it does seem that the airbag problems have finally been put to bed, for the time being.
