INFINITI

Is Infiniti reliable?

4,590 complaints across 1,813 production runs — 2.53 per run against 3.72 for the market. Below, every Infiniti model ranked by how often owners of the same build actually filed.

NHTSA owner complaints · 4,590 complaints · 1990–2026 · Updated Aug 5, 2026
Quick answer

Infiniti averages 2.53 complaints per production run against 3.72 across the market, and its cars reach the halfway point of their complaints at 6 years. Cleanest model in the range is the G20 (1.3 per run), heaviest the G35 (7.25).

When it starts 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.

FIG.01·Infiniti — age at failure
Age at failureComplaintsRunning totalWarranty
0 years3969.2%covered
1 year27215.6%covered
2 years23821.1%covered
3 years23426.6%you pay
4 years29433.5%you pay
5 years35241.7%you pay
6 years45052.2%you pay
7 years48963.6%you pay
8 years37272.3%you pay
9 years33380%you pay
10 years23685.5%you pay
11 years20690.3%you pay
12 years16494.2%you pay
13 years11896.9%you pay
14 years7998.8%you pay
15 years53100%you pay
ROWS 16·SOURCE NHTSA complaints with incident dates

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.

Infiniti models ranked

Cleanest first. The rate is complaints per production run, so a model that sold in millions is not punished for it — this compares how often owners of the same build actually filed.

FIG.02·Infiniti models by complaint rate
ModelPer runComplaintsBreaks atYears
Infiniti G201.3704.4 yrs1991–2002
Infiniti QX801.31203.8 yrs2014–2026
Infiniti Q601.32794.2 yrs2014–2021
Infiniti M371.49705.6 yrs2011–2013
Infiniti J301.53494.4 yrs1993–1997
Infiniti QX301.63574.3 yrs2017–2019
Infiniti EX351.66586.8 yrs2008–2012
Infiniti Q451.691625.8 yrs1990–2005
Infiniti FX352.13647.6 yrs2003–2012
Infiniti QX42.142238.9 yrs1997–2003
Infiniti QX562.364767.1 yrs2004–2013
Infiniti G372.384917.3 yrs2008–2013
Infiniti QX502.382504.2 yrs2014–2025
Infiniti Q502.624534.9 yrs2014–2023
Infiniti QX602.675694.6 yrs2014–2026
Infiniti I302.731916.4 yrs1996–2001
Infiniti I355.091789.3 yrs2002–2004
Infiniti M456.71547.9 yrs2003–2004
Infiniti G357.257187.1 yrs2003–2009
ROWS 19·SOURCE NHTSA complaints, grouped by VIN production run
Upgrade to Pro

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
Free plan available — no credit card needed

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.

Frequently asked questions

Is Infiniti reliable?

Infiniti averages 2.53 complaints per production run against 3.72 across the market, with the halfway point of complaints at 6 years.

Which Infiniti model is most reliable?

By complaint rate, the G20 at 1.3 per run. The full ranking is in the table above.

Which Infiniti should I avoid?

Heaviest complaint rate in the range is the G35 at 7.25 per run — though a high rate on one generation does not condemn the model outright.

Where do these numbers come from?

Complaints filed with NHTSA, the US federal safety regulator. Filing one is a deliberate act, so this measures faults people considered serious — not survey opinions.

Complaint records from NHTSA, grouped by VIN production run (characters 1–11). Rates, age-at-failure and warranty coverage computed by ForCar. Model years newer than 6 years are excluded from rankings — complaints accumulate for a decade. Last updated Aug 2026. — ForCar Reviewed by , founder of ForCar.