Methodology & Data Integrity

What These Numbers Cannot Tell You

Complaint counts are not normalised for sales volume. Best-selling vehicles naturally receive more complaints in absolute numbers.

Complaints are self-selected reports, not verified defects. Older vehicles accumulate more complaints purely by existing longer.

Because of these limits, we never publish a reliability score, a best/worst year claim, or advice to avoid a vehicle. Any site claiming to rank vehicles by raw complaint counts is misusing federal data.

The Variant Merge — Why Our Counts Differ

NHTSA does not store one record per consumer vehicle. It stores records against raw model strings, splitting trucks and SUVs across multiple cab and trim designations. We merge body-style variants deterministically while keeping weight classes distinct.

Core Normalization Rules

• We merge body styles (SUPERCAB, SUPER CREW, REGULAR CAB, etc.) because a buyer researching a model year wants the complete component problem picture.
• We never merge weight classes (e.g. F-150 and F-250, 1500 and 2500 remain strictly separated).
• Where a model string is ambiguous, software suggests a candidate but only a human operator approves the merge.

How Each Figure Is Calculated

Complaint and recall counts reflect distinct records de-duplicated by NHTSA identifier. Component breakdown is the share of reports naming each system, which is mathematically robust because the denominator is the vehicle itself.

AI Disclosure & Site Generation

No page text on this site is written by an AI language model. All page content is deterministically templated from verified structured data. AI is used solely for component taxonomy classification and for suggesting candidate merges that a human reviewer validates.

Methodology Revision History