Check any car for problems and recalls before you buy.
Owners have filed 1,579,171 complaints about their vehicles with federal safety regulators, and manufacturers have opened 21,987 recalls. Look up any car and read the record.
What fails most
Complaints per system, whole record- Electrical System141,443
- Engine129,298
- Air Bags120,208
- Power Train97,800
- Steering89,619
- Service Brakes67,807
- Vehicle Speed Control42,264
- Structure › Body42,111
A lit lamp marks a system where more than a thousand complaints describe a fire.
Filed this week
Verbatim · newest on file Oct 29, 2026High beam headlights stopped working and the ignition control module connector with a burnt power supply.
2008 Buick Lacrosse · Electrical System · Oct 29, 2026
The engine fails to restart automatically after shutting off at a complete stop (such as a red light or intersection
2025 Honda Odyssey · Engine · Oct 29, 2026
The rear-view camera could display a blank or distorted image on the center display screen when the vehicle is in reverse. We also receive a message that the rear-view camera is unavailable on the center display screen.
2015 Ford Escape · Unknown or Other · Oct 29, 2026
Complaints are unverified accounts submitted by vehicle owners and published by NHTSA. Text is reproduced as filed.
Stop driving these
All 883 →A do-not-drive advisory is the most serious warning a recall carries. It means the defect can hurt someone before the repair happens.
| Vehicle | Recalls | Complaints | Most reported failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 Ford Fusion | 13 | 5,131 | Steering |
| 2011 Ford Fusion | 9 | 2,795 | Steering |
| 2013 Ford Escape | 18 | 2,753 | Engine |
| 2014 Ford Focus | 12 | 2,606 | Power Train |
| 2012 Ford Fusion | 6 | 2,517 | Steering |
Where failures turn serious
Full ranking →Ranked by the share of each car's complaints that describe a fire, a crash or an injury — not by how many were filed, which only finds the best-sellers.
| Vehicle | Complaints | Fires | Crashes | Deaths | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix | 308 | 106 | 14 | 8 | Fatalities reported |
| 1992 Lincoln Town Car | 249 | 93 | 11 | 1 | Fatalities reported |
| 1991 Ford Aerostar | 223 | 69 | 23 | 1 | Fatalities reported |
| 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix | 461 | 162 | 10 | 0 | High concern |
| 2000 Ford F-150 | 1,075 | 343 | 81 | 1 | Fatalities reported |
| 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix | 412 | 125 | 13 | 2 | Fatalities reported |
| 1990 Lincoln Town Car | 209 | 64 | 22 | 0 | High concern |
| 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix | 330 | 96 | 19 | 1 | Fatalities reported |
By manufacturer
All 1,866 →Why this site exists
Ask the internet whether a car is reliable and you get articles calling a transmission "notorious" with nothing behind the word, or a forum thread with four owners in it. The actual evidence is public: NHTSA publishes every complaint an owner files and every recall a manufacturer opens. It just sits in gigabyte-sized text files with no column headers.
We parse those files and show what they contain — how many people reported the same failure, at what mileage it hit them, whether anyone was hurt, and what the manufacturer did about it. It is the closest thing to an evidence-based reliability rating that exists for a used car: not an opinion about the badge, but a count of what actually broke and how often it broke.
How to check for recalls
To check for recalls on a car you are looking at, start with the year, make and model. Every vehicle page carries the safety recalls opened against that model year — the defect in the manufacturer’s own words, the consequence NHTSA recorded, the remedy offered, and the number of units affected. A recall search by model tells you what has gone wrong with that vehicle as a class, which is the question worth asking before you buy one.
Owning the car is a different question. Whether one particular vehicle still has unrepaired work outstanding is tracked by VIN, and only the manufacturer knows whether that car has been through a shop. Our VIN lookup decodes what the vehicle is and opens its record; for the repair status of a single VIN, use the federal recall lookup at nhtsa.gov/recalls or ask a franchised dealer. We do not claim to know it, because nobody outside the manufacturer does.
What a complaint is, and what it is not
A complaint is an unverified account filed by an owner or a driver. NHTSA publishes it as written and investigates only a fraction of them. One complaint proves nothing. Two hundred complaints naming the same component on the same model year is a pattern, and that is how the counts here should be read: as a measure of how often a problem gets reported, not as a verdict on the car in your driveway.
A recall is the opposite kind of document. It is a formal admission, filed by the manufacturer under federal law, that a defect exists and will be repaired at no cost to the owner. Where a recall carries a do-not-drive or park-outside advisory, the agency has decided the risk will not wait for a service appointment.
How the figures are calculated → · Where the data comes from →