1,020 Complaints Describe Waiting for Parts. Some of Them Waited Months.
Everything about a recall or warranty claim assumes the part is on a shelf. When it is not, the owner holds a car that is officially fixable and actually undriveable.
10,613 Complaints Say the Warranty Had Expired. 6,811 Say the Claim Was Denied.
A warranty is a date, and faults do not consult it. Thousands of complaints describe the conversation that follows, including the one avenue most owners do not know exists.
8,614 Complaints Use the Word Stranded. Their Crash Rate Is 0.9%.
Being left at the roadside is the most-anticipated car failure and statistically among the least dangerous. Knowing which faults actually strand people is more useful than fearing all of them equally.
14,007 Complaints Mention Heat. 3,896 Are About the Air Conditioning Stopping.
Cold exposes wear. Heat exposes capacity. The complaints filed in summer describe a different set of failures from the ones filed in January, and one of them is a safety problem people do not treat as one.
15,810 Complaints Describe a Fault That Happens in the Morning. Only 1.4% Involve a Crash.
Some faults only exist before the car has warmed up. They are harmless by the numbers and expensive by the time anyone takes them seriously.
Two in Five Complaints Mention the Dealer. 7,186 Say the Fault Could Not Be Reproduced.
Complaint text is usually mined for what broke. Reading it for who the owner dealt with produces a different picture: in two cases out of five, the visit to the dealer is the thing being described.
Lemon Law Comes Up at 2.5 Years. Lawyers at 6.6. NHTSA at 7.3.
When something goes wrong, owners reach for whatever remedy is available at that moment. Which one they name turns out to date the car almost as precisely as the odometer.
53,811 Complaints Describe a Dealer Refusing to Fix the Car
The warranty covers the car. What it does not cover is a fault that behaves itself in the service bay, and the complaint record is full of people caught in exactly that gap.
Owners Reported 69,978 Repair Bills. The Median Is $1,000.
Repair cost guides are built from labour rates and parts catalogues. This is built from what owners said they actually paid, written at the moment they were angry enough to file a federal complaint.
Complaints Mentioning Snow Involve a Crash 12% of the Time. The Overall Rate Is 5.8%.
A fault that is survivable on dry tarmac is often not survivable on snow. The complaint record quantifies that gap, and it is larger than any other condition we can isolate in the text.
25 MPG Scored 6.4 Out of 10 in 2012. Today It Scores 5.1.
The number out of ten on the window sticker looks like a rating of the car. It is a rating of the car against everything else on sale that year, and the comparison set keeps improving.
Theft Cover Rose 32% in Four Years. Liability Rose 10%.
Everyone knows car insurance got more expensive. Splitting the premium into its three parts shows the increase is not spread evenly, and the fastest-growing part is the one that covers what happens to a parked car.