Car complaint statistics: 87,348 filings you can cite
87,348 owner complaints, read across 122 model-years from NHTSA's public database on 2026-09-15. Every ratio this site publishes comes from here, and you're welcome to use them.
Short version
Public data, our arithmetic
The complaints are a federal record and belong to nobody. What we added is the reading: which model-years we pulled, how we removed duplicates, and what share of each fleet said a particular thing. Take any figure below with a link back.
Where it comes from
Every figure comes from NHTSA's complaints API at https://api.nhtsa.gov/complaints/complaintsByVehicle, queried by make, model and model year. It's a public database and you can run the same queries yourself. Nothing here needs our permission or ours to see.
Complaints are written by owners, in their own words, and we match them with keyword filters
documented in tools/make-charts.py. Owner-written free text, so approximate in both directions. That cuts both ways and we would
rather say so than imply a precision the source doesn't have: the filter misses a complaint that describes fuel in
the oil without using the word, and counts one that mentions it in passing.
How the totals are counted
The headline figure is a union over model-years, not a sum. Two of the scans below both read the Honda CR-V 2017; adding them would put those 1,752 records into the total twice. We count each car-year once no matter how many charts use it, so adding a chart can never inflate the number by accident.
Only scans that a published article already backs appear here. We leave out the work behind an article still scheduled for a later date, because a figure this site can't back up on a page you can open is the sort of number we tell readers to distrust.
The scans
6 published so far. Complaints read is every complaint owners filed against those model-years; matched is how many of them stated the thing we counted.
Which manufacturers the oil dilution complaints belong to
Every complaint filed for model years 2010 to 2025 whose wording names oil dilution or describes it, counted by make. The same filter as the CR-V chart, run over the bulk complaint file because a cross-make question has no single make to ask the API for. Makes below ten complaints are left out of the chart and named in its own record.
| Make | Complaints | Share of all |
|---|---|---|
| Honda | 451 | 81.7% |
| Ford | 32 | 5.8% |
| Kia | 13 | 2.4% |
| Hyundai | 12 | 2.2% |
| Chevrolet | 11 | 2.0% |
Oil dilution in the Honda CR-V 1.5T
Every complaint filed against the 2017-2022 CR-V, counting those that name fuel dilution or describe it: fuel smell in the oil, a rising dipstick level, oil thinning in cold weather.
| Model year | Complaints read | Matched | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 1,762 | 173 | 9.8% |
| 2018 | 2,133 | 172 | 8.1% |
| 2019 | 1,091 | 34 | 3.1% |
| 2020 | 352 | 6 | 1.7% |
| 2021 | 328 | 4 | 1.2% |
| 2022 | 255 | 2 | 0.8% |
Wet belt failures in the Ford EcoSport 1.0
Complaints against the 2018-2020 EcoSport that name the timing belt, the belt-driven oil pump, or the debris path between them.
| Model year | Complaints read | Matched | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 726 | 74 | 10.2% |
| 2019 | 459 | 42 | 9.2% |
| 2020 | 394 | 51 | 12.9% |
Where expensive failures land on the odometer
Complaints across a mainstream fleet that state both a failure and the mileage it happened at, grouped into bands.
| Group | Complaints read | Matched | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 50,000 | 160 | 59 | 36.9% |
| 50,000-100,000 | 160 | 69 | 43.1% |
| 100,000-150,000 | 160 | 29 | 18.1% |
| Over 150,000 | 160 | 3 | 1.9% |
How fast owners say their engines burn oil
Complaints that state a consumption rate in quarts per distance, compared against the rate GM's own service bulletin accepts.
| Group | Complaints read | Matched | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Faster than 1 qt / 500 mi | 94 | 36 | 38.3% |
| 1 qt per 500-1,000 mi | 94 | 40 | 42.6% |
| 1 qt per 1,000-2,000 mi | 94 | 13 | 13.8% |
| Within GM's accepted rate | 94 | 5 | 5.3% |
Which models draw the most four-figure complaints
Complaints naming a repair in the thousands, as a share of every complaint filed against that model, a ratio inside each model, so sales volume can't flatter or punish it.
| Group | Complaints read | Matched | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chevrolet Equinox | 1,623 | 419 | 25.8% |
| Nissan Sentra | 828 | 197 | 23.8% |
| Kia Optima | 2,252 | 377 | 16.7% |
| Nissan Rogue | 1,291 | 215 | 16.7% |
| Ford Focus | 7,537 | 1,172 | 15.5% |
| Toyota Camry | 1,224 | 180 | 14.7% |
| Hyundai Sonata | 3,019 | 432 | 14.3% |
| Nissan Altima | 2,090 | 287 | 13.7% |
| Subaru Outback | 1,143 | 130 | 11.4% |
| Ford Escape | 3,764 | 396 | 10.5% |
| Subaru Forester | 918 | 73 | 8.0% |
| Hyundai Elantra | 1,323 | 103 | 7.8% |
| Chevrolet Cruze | 1,813 | 141 | 7.8% |
| Honda CR-V | 1,375 | 100 | 7.3% |
| Volkswagen Jetta | 1,045 | 58 | 5.6% |
| Ford Fusion | 5,445 | 214 | 3.9% |
| Honda Accord | 1,946 | 74 | 3.8% |
| Toyota Rav4 | 694 | 24 | 3.5% |
| Honda Civic | 1,817 | 58 | 3.2% |
| Chevrolet Malibu | 2,090 | 55 | 2.6% |
| Jeep Grand Cherokee | 4,319 | 105 | 2.4% |
| Toyota Corolla | 925 | 19 | 2.1% |
Download the data
The counts behind the car pages, the complaint lookup and the quarterly report, as one CSV: 24,381 rows, one per component named for a vehicle, covering 4,091 vehicles from the 2010 to 2025 model years with at least 10 complaints each. The file is a snapshot of the NHTSA bulk complaint file taken on August 25, 2026, and component names are spelled exactly as this site spells them, so a row can be matched to an article without guessing.
nhtsa-complaints-by-model-2010-2025.csv (1.0 MB). Columns: make, model, model_year, component, complaints, and year_total, the total complaints filed against that vehicle across every component.
License: CC BY 4.0. Use it, redraw it or republish it. Credit it with this line, or one that says the same thing:
Source: Oil & Miles, NHTSA owner complaints by make, model and model year, 2010 to 2025,
snapshot of August 25, 2026, oilandmiles.com/data
The complaints themselves are a federal record that nobody owns. What the license covers is our counting, naming and arrangement. Counts rise every quarter, so the snapshot date is part of the citation.
Using these figures
Take them. Quote the ratio, reproduce the table, redraw the chart, with a credit to Oil & Miles, a link to the page you took it from, and the date you took the data. That last part isn't politeness: complaint counts grow every month, so a figure without a date is a figure that will quietly stop being true. The full terms are on our permissions page.
Figures taken 2026-09-15 and not restated since. Complaint counts rise over time, so treat these as a reading on that date rather than a current total. See the disclaimer.