How we count
Reliability on this site is the NHTSA record: recalls, owner complaints, and the complaint rate inside one model. Every number on a page is rebuilt from public federal data, and every page shows its data-as-of date.
The complaint rate
years elapsed = years on the road, capped at 3
Fewer complaints per year is the stronger record. The rate is complaints filed in a year’s first 3 years on the road, divided by however many of those years have passed — never the lifetime total, which would make a young model year look stronger than an aged one purely for not having had time to accumulate complaints yet. A year is compared with the other years of the same model on that same basis: more than 10% under their median is the stronger record, more than 10% over is the weaker record, and inside that band is about the same.
Young files are not ranked
A model year younger than 3 years on the road has not had the same chance to accumulate complaints as an older one, so it is named as too early to compare rather than ranked — not the stronger record, not the weaker one, not even a hedged “short file.” Its complaint count is still reported, so a thin file is never read as a verdict.
Recalls are their own count
Recalls are not folded into the complaint rate. The vehicles-affected number is NHTSA's total for the whole campaign, which can include other model years and other models.
Crash stars are a safety result
NHTSA NCAP stars sit beside the complaint record. They are not an input to it and not a reliability rating. Not rated means that test was not run for that version.
What we don't show
No 0–100 score and no Buy, Caution, or Avoid label. Raw complaint totals are not a rate per car, so we do not rank one make or model against another on them. Kelley Blue Book ratings are licensed data and are not on this site.
US-market cars, three languages
The numbers are for the US-market car. Every page exists in English, Español, and Français, and each language is the same full page.
Photos
One exterior photo per body, from Wikimedia Commons under a license that allows reuse, credited on the page. A year with no suitable photo shows no photo. We do not use manufacturer press photos.
Specs and known issues
Oil, tire size, towing, generations and known-issues summaries are researched per model and linked to their sources. A field we could not source is left off, not guessed.