The Nearest Ford Dealer Is 15 Miles Away. The Nearest RAM Is 72.
Counting dealers tells you how many exist. Measuring the gaps between them tells you whether they cover the country or huddle in the same places, and those are very different networks.
Brakes Are 4.5% of Complaints on Light Cars and 43% on Heavy Ones
Mass protects the people inside a car. It also has to be stopped, and the complaint record shows exactly where that bill arrives.
Four Insurance Numbers, Four Directions, One Variable
Ask whether a bigger car costs more to insure and the honest answer is that it depends which part of the premium you mean. The four components move independently, and two of them move in opposite directions.
Turbo Complaints Arrive at 5.1 Years. Timing Chains Take 7.2.
The turbocharger used to be a performance part on cars bought by people who understood it. It is now standard equipment on family hatchbacks, and it fails earlier than the components it replaced.
One Overheating Complaint in 17 Ends With the Car on Fire
Overheating reads as an inconvenience: pull over, let it cool, top up the coolant. In one case in seventeen the sequence ends somewhere else entirely.
The Chain Was Supposed to Be the Maintenance-Free One
Manufacturers moved from belts to chains and told buyers the service interval had gone away. The complaint record suggests the interval did not disappear so much as stop being scheduled.
23% of Recalls Are Fixed by Somebody Looking at the Car
A recall letter promises a free repair. The remedy field says what that repair actually is, and for a substantial share of campaigns the answer is that somebody will check and probably do nothing.
July Breaks More Cars Than April. By 25%.
Car failures are not spread evenly across the year. Sorting a million incidents by month produces a shape with two peaks, and both of them are about temperature rather than mileage.
Five Years of Fuel Costs More Than the Explorer Itself
On a ten-year-old car the purchase price is the smaller number. Fuel is the bigger one, and because it arrives forty dollars at a time nobody adds it up before buying.
A Tesla Costs More to Repair Than a BMW. A Fiat Costs a Third.
The cost of putting a car back together after a crash varies by a factor of five between badges, and the ordering has surprises in it. One mass-market brand sits above every German luxury marque.
Fixing Your Own Car Got 26% Dearer. Fixing Theirs Didn't.
Two insurance indexes track the cost of the same accidents from opposite ends. One has climbed steadily for two decades and the other has not moved at all, and the difference is sitting in your front bumper.
The Honda S2000 Gets Stolen Twice as Often as It Gets Crashed
Insurance splits your premium into two very different bets. One is about how you drive; the other is about who wants your car when you are not in it. Comparing them exposes which vehicles are targets.