Half of all owner complaints arrive by 5 years of age. Basic warranties run three. That gap is the whole story: 73.1% of failures land after the manufacturer stops paying, which is why the year you buy matters more than the badge.
When cars start to break
Not the calendar year the complaint was filed — the age of the car when it failed. This is the number that decides whether a fault costs you anything: inside the warranty the manufacturer pays, outside it you do.
| Age at failure | Complaints | Running total | Warranty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 years | 9.7% | covered | |
| 1 year | 18.5% | covered | |
| 2 years | 26.9% | covered | |
| 3 years | 36.7% | you pay | |
| 4 years | 47.1% | you pay | |
| 5 years | 57.5% | you pay | |
| 6 years | 67% | you pay | |
| 7 years | 75% | you pay | |
| 8 years | 81.7% | you pay | |
| 9 years | 87.1% | you pay | |
| 10 years | 91.2% | you pay | |
| 11 years | 94.3% | you pay | |
| 12 years | 96.5% | you pay | |
| 13 years | 98.1% | you pay | |
| 14 years | 99.2% | you pay | |
| 15 years | 100% | you pay |
The market pattern: failures peak at four to five years, while basic warranties stop at three. That is why a three-year-old car off lease looks like a bargain and a five-year-old one is where the bills start.
Reliability by brand
Complaints per production run across every model of the marque. Fewer is better. Note that this measures how often owners complained to the federal regulator — a serious bar, quite different from a satisfaction survey.
| Brand | Per run | Complaints | Models | Crash-related |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audi | 9,238 | 50 | 3.4% | |
| Suzuki | 3,079 | 17 | 9.2% | |
| Mitsubishi | 8,144 | 26 | 11% | |
| Volvo | 5,510 | 39 | 4.7% | |
| BMW | 13,111 | 105 | 4.4% | |
| GMC | 29,598 | 25 | 5.2% | |
| Subaru | 22,483 | 21 | 6% | |
| Infiniti | 4,590 | 33 | 6% | |
| Cadillac | 12,964 | 32 | 6.5% | |
| Mazda | 17,028 | 27 | 6.6% | |
| Volkswagen | 25,925 | 34 | 3.8% | |
| Acura | 11,238 | 17 | 5.2% | |
| RAM | 16,974 | 9 | 4.3% | |
| Lincoln | 11,420 | 17 | 5.9% | |
| Buick | 16,826 | 25 | 5.4% | |
| Mercedes-Benz | 16,003 | 40 | 4.1% | |
| Dodge | 70,321 | 43 | 6.1% | |
| Honda | 77,453 | 21 | 6.5% | |
| Chevrolet | 123,800 | 62 | 5.8% | |
| Toyota | 87,205 | 42 | 10% | |
| Saturn | 10,411 | 14 | 5.6% | |
| Pontiac | 19,041 | 17 | 5.5% | |
| Ford | 207,951 | 59 | 4.8% | |
| Chrysler | 29,734 | 36 | 5% | |
| Hyundai | 47,965 | 35 | 5.4% | |
| Mini | 3,426 | 8 | 2.4% | |
| Kia | 38,051 | 25 | 5.3% | |
| Jeep | 73,283 | 22 | 5.1% | |
| Nissan | 58,260 | 36 | 5.1% | |
| Tesla | 6,071 | 6 | 10.8% |
Good year or bad year — the VIN settles it.
- Check any VIN against complaints for its exact build year and plant
- Exact value for that car, adjusted for its mileage
- Full research report as a PDF you can hand to a mechanic
- Alerts if a recall lands on a car in your garage
- No ads, on every page
- No ads, no tracking — and much more
How we measure it
Reliability scores usually arrive as a number out of five with no working shown. We publish the arithmetic instead, because two things about it are arguable and you should be able to argue with them.
Rate, not total. A model that sold three million units collects more complaints than one that sold thirty thousand, and that says nothing about either. So we divide by the number of production runs — the distinct first-eleven-character VIN prefixes on record. Across 1,100,006 complaints and 295,326 runs the market average works out at 3.72 per run.
Age, not year. Every complaint carries an incident date and a model year, so we can work out how old the car was when it failed. That is what the warranty question turns on, and it is why our «worst year» rankings exclude anything built in the last 6 years — those cars simply have not had time to break yet.
What this is not. A complaint to NHTSA is a deliberate act, so this measures serious faults, not paint that scratched. It says nothing about running costs or how nice a car is to own. And an absence of complaints on a rare model means an absence of owners, not excellence.
Related tools
Frequently asked questions
How is car reliability measured here?
Complaints filed with NHTSA, divided by the number of production runs on record. That turns a raw count into a rate, so a best-seller is not penalised for selling well.
At what age do cars start breaking?
Half of all complaints arrive by 5 years, with the peak at four to five. Basic warranties end at three, so most failures land after the manufacturer stops paying.
Which car brand is most reliable?
By complaint rate, Audi at 1.91 per production run. The table above ranks every brand with enough records.
Is this the same as Consumer Reports?
No. Those are owner surveys — opinions, gathered from subscribers. This is federal complaint records — actions, taken by people who had a fault serious enough to report to a regulator. The two measure different things and often disagree.