Chevrolet Silverado

Which Chevrolet Silverado years should you avoid?

Going by 8,748 owner complaints filed with NHTSA, the Chevrolet Silverado years to avoid are 1999, 2000, 2006, 2001 and 2002.

• 19991,660 complaints, 9.1× a typical Silverado year, most often about the brakes.
• 20001,305 complaints, 7.2× a typical Silverado year, most often about the brakes.
• 20065.4× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (7 fires, 8 crashes, 5 deaths).
• 2001877 complaints, 4.8× a typical Silverado year, most often about the brakes.
• 2002710 complaints, 3.9× a typical Silverado year, most often about the brakes.

4 more years cleared the same bar; they are marked in the table below.

Better bets: among years old enough for a low count to mean something, the 2014 drew the fewest complaints without an unusual share of serious ones.

How this is worked out: each year is compared with a typical year of the same model, which takes most of the difference in sales out of it, and its share of serious failures is compared with every other car of the same model year, because older cars were complained about differently. A year needs 25 complaints to be judged at all. Complaints are unverified owner reports. Full method →