Which cars owners actually complain about.

Every safety complaint filed with the federal government, divided by how many of each model were sold — because a best-seller collects more complaints simply by having more cars on the road. 73 models, ranked inside their own class.

73 models · complaint and recall counts from NHTSA, model years 2023-2025/2024-2026 · computed 2026-08-13

5 findings from the data.

Each figure is computed from the full table — quote it with a link to this page.

1. 01Across the 73 models tracked, the median is 1.05 NHTSA complaints per 1,000 sold. The 2026 Toyota Corolla records the lowest rate at 0.22, the 2026 Honda Prologue the highest at 12.51 — a 56-fold spread between the two ends of the same new-car market.
2. 02Electric models record a median 1.98 complaints per 1,000 sold against 0.80 for gas — about 2.47 times as many. Complaint data cannot separate defect rate from reporting behaviour: electric owners skew engaged, and charging and software categories have no gas equivalent. Read it as a difference in complaints filed, not as a reliability verdict.
3. 03Newer platforms do not draw more complaints. Models with 3 years or less in production record a median 0.79 per 1,000 against 1.13 for established platforms — lower, not higher, which is the opposite of what a teething-trouble assumption predicts.
4. 04Class matters more than any single model. Trucks carry the highest class median at 1.30 complaints per 1,000, Sedans the lowest at 0.80 — which is why every rank on this page is within class rather than across the whole fleet.
5. 058 of the 81 models tracked have no publishable rate — too new, or with too little sales exposure behind the count to divide honestly. They are listed as Provisional rather than shown as zero.

The gap that is not a reliability verdict.

The clearest pattern in the data is by powertrain, not by brand or platform age — and it is also the one most easily misread.

Median complaint rate by class.

All 73 models, lowest complaint rate first.

Click a column to re-sort, or filter to one class. Every row carries the raw complaint count and the model years it covers, so any figure here can be checked against NHTSA directly.

How the index is built.