Most faults are annoying. A smaller number are expensive. A smaller number still end with a flatbed, and those are the ones that define whether a car is dependable.
70,474 complaints mention being towed — roughly one in fifteen of everything on file.
| Component | Tow-away complaints |
|---|---|
| Power train | 12,628 |
| Engine | 11,593 |
| Electrical system | 9,426 |
| Engine and cooling | 7,003 |
| Steering | 6,828 |
| Air bags | 4,370 |
Six years old
The number that should give people pause is the age. The average vehicle in these complaints was 6.1 years old when it had to be towed.
That is not an old car. It is a car most owners would describe as still new-ish, out of warranty on some brands and still inside it on others, at the point in its life when nobody is budgeting for a recovery truck.
It is also younger than the point where our other measurements say trouble starts. Brake line corrosion complaints arrive at 9.5 years, structural rust at 8.8. Being stranded happens earlier than the things people worry about.
Three systems do half of it
Powertrain, engine and electrical account for 33,647 of the 70,474 — and they share a property that wear items do not have.
Brakes wear out gradually and warn you. Tyres wear out visibly. Suspension knocks for months before anything breaks.
A transmission that loses drive, an engine that stops, a control module that dies — none of those degrade politely. They work and then they do not, and the car does not move afterwards.
That is why the tow-away list is not the same as the complaint list overall. Electrical is the largest complaint category across the whole database, but it sits third here, behind two systems that fail more abruptly.
The airbag row is a different thing
4,370 tow-away complaints name airbags, and those cars were almost always drivable.
They were towed because the owner or the dealer decided that a vehicle with a suspect restraint system should not be driven to the workshop. That is a judgement call rather than a mechanical necessity, and it is the one category here where the tow was precautionary.
Worth separating, because counting it alongside a seized engine overstates how often airbag faults immobilise anything.
8,751 of these also involved a crash
That figure is the reason this matters beyond inconvenience.
A car towed from a driveway is a bad morning. A car towed from the scene of a collision is a different sequence: the fault happened while the vehicle was moving, and the recovery was the aftermath rather than the event.
One in eight of these tow-aways falls into the second category.
What reduces the odds
The pattern points at drivetrain and electrical systems, which are exactly the areas a visual inspection covers worst.
Three checks do more than a walk-around. Start the car properly cold and listen through the first two minutes. Have the fault memory read — stored codes survive a dashboard that looks clean. And read the service history for what has already been replaced, because a car that has had a control module or a transmission repair is telling you something about which failure mode it favours.
The recorded history for a specific vehicle is what a free VIN check returns, and on this category it is worth reading before the test drive rather than after.
Frequently asked questions
How often do modern cars leave people stranded?
70,474 complaints mention the vehicle being towed — about one in fifteen. The average car it happened to was 6.1 years old, which is well inside the age most owners consider trouble-free.
What strands cars most often?
Powertrain faults lead at 12,628 tow-away complaints, then engine at 11,593 and electrical at 9,426. Together those three account for roughly half. Airbag faults appear 4,370 times, which is different in kind — those cars were usually drivable and towed for safety rather than immobility.
Is being towed a sign of a serious defect?
It separates faults that inconvenience you from faults that stop you. 8,751 of these complaints also record a crash, so a meaningful share involve the failure happening while the vehicle was moving rather than in a driveway.
What should I check to avoid this?
The pattern points at drivetrain and electrical systems rather than at wear items. On a used purchase, a cold start, a look for stored fault codes and the vehicle's service record cover more of this risk than a visual inspection does.
Denis Kataev is a serial solopreneur and the founder of ForCar. With 15+ years in software engineering and 10 years in SEO, he builds data-driven products end to end — backed by a sharp eye for design. At ForCar he mines proprietary vehicle datasets, turning raw numbers into buying advice you can actually trust.
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