We Checked 105 Cars Our Readers Actually Own. They Carry 5.9 Open Recalls Each.
Every argument about unclaimed recalls uses national estimates. We have something better: the actual cars our readers saved to their garage, and what was still open on them.
People Run 217,000 Checks on Cars Built Since 2020. On Pre-2000 Cars, 13,000.
I sorted every VIN lookup by how old the car was. Attention piles up on nearly-new vehicles and thins out exactly where a car's history starts to be worth reading.
A Tesla VIN Gets Run 42 Times. A Ford VIN Gets Run 11.
We can see how many times each individual VIN gets looked up. Sorting that by brand produces a ranking of buyer anxiety, and one manufacturer is a very long way clear.
A Motorcycle VIN Has 17 Digits Too. Almost Everything Else Is Different.
I went through our catalog and marked every motorcycle by hand — 918 of them. Decoding a bike VIN works the same way as a car's until you get to the parts that actually matter when buying one.
The Cars People Check Aren't the Cars People Sell
We hold two datasets that rarely get compared: 310,383 cars for sale, and 28,797 VINs people typed into a decoder. Lining them up shows which vehicles buyers worry about — and it isn't a straight reflection of what's on the market.
157 Cars for Sale Have No Title at All. They Average $4,459.
Every so often a listing says "lost title" or "bill of sale only" and the price is a third of what the car should fetch. There are 157 of them in our data, and understanding why they're cheap is a short lesson in how car ownership actually works.
Subaru Has the Most Wrecked Cars on the Used Market
I sorted every listing by brand and counted branded titles. Subaru came out on top at 12.4%, ahead of Tesla and Honda. For a marque built on safety adverts that looks like a contradiction — until you look at who buys them and where they live.
People Run the Same VIN 15 Times Before They Buy
I expected one lookup per car. The logs say otherwise: 430,409 checks spread across 28,797 unique VINs. People return to the same seventeen digits over and over, and the shape of that curve is the most honest picture of car buying I've seen in our data.
Airbags Are 11% of All Car Complaints. Check Yours.
Airbags generate 11% of every complaint filed with NHTSA. The models topping the list share one specific reason — and it gets more dangerous with time.
The Most Expensive Cars on the Market Still Belong to a Bank
I sorted every listing by title status expecting salvage at the bottom and clean at the top. Clean wasn't at the top. The priciest cars in the entire dataset are the ones somebody else's bank still has a claim on.
Nebraska Lists 19× More Wrecked Cars Than Virginia
I sorted 310,383 listings by state and counted how many carried a salvage or rebuilt title. Nebraska came out at 13.3%, Virginia at 0.7%. Then I checked what those damaged cars sell for, and that number bothered me more than the first one.
84% of Private Sellers Won't Show You the VIN
I run a free VIN decoder, so I read used-car ads from an odd angle: not "is this a good price," but "can I even check this car before I drive two hours to see it." So I counted all 310,383 of them. Just over half include a VIN. Which half is the whole story.