The Most Complained-About Cars 2010-2025

The 25 vehicles with the most complaints

Complaints filed with NHTSA per vehicle, model years 2010-2025, and the component named most often.

The strip marks other model years where the same model had the same component named most. Counts of reports, not rates.

Table 1. The 25 vehicles with the most complaints, model years 2010-2025

No car in the top 25 matches. Clear filters

Source: NHTSA consumer complaints bulk file dated 2026-08-25, counted once per make, model and model year by Oil & Miles. Counts of reports, not rates.

The full top 100 is also in the edition's data file. Look up any vehicle with at least 10 complaints in our complaints lookup, or download the CSV for every component.

What the table shows

In numbers. 625,987 complaints across 4,087 make, model and year combinations, model years 2010-2025.

The 2010 Ford Fusion leads with 5,126, steering named most (1,640); Ford is named in about 21 of every 100 complaints, Chevrolet in about 9.

Ford holds eight of the twelve most complained-about vehicles, and two components lead six of them: steering on the 2010, 2011 and 2012 Fusion and the power train on the 2012 and 2014 Focus and the 2013 F-150.

A shared component name doesn't prove a single defect. One make with two components named again and again, across several model years, fills most of a table like this.

These numbers count reports, not failures. A car that sold in huge numbers, or drew a recall and news coverage, collects more complaints than a rarer car with a worse record.

Repeats tell you more than the ranking does. The Escape appears for 2013 and 2017 with the engine named most both times, and the 2017 drew more engine complaints (1,555 against 1,264) even though its total was lower.

The Tesla Model Y repeats too, for 2021 and 2023, with owners naming forward collision avoidance and adaptive cruise control. One bad year doesn't show a pattern, but the same part named two model years apart is worth checking.

Makes by share of all complaints

Share of the 625,987 complaints in the file. A make that sells more cars tends to draw more complaints from its owners; this is volume as much as anything.

• Ford 20.8%130,217
• Chevrolet 9.3%57,938
• Honda 7.3%45,995
• Jeep 6.8%42,287
• Hyundai 6.4%39,777
• Toyota 5.8%36,081
• Kia 5.2%32,431
• Nissan 4.7%29,280
• Dodge 4.3%26,944
• GMC3.3%20,371
• Ram 3.1%19,583
• Subaru 2.9%18,345
• Other makes (72) 20.2%126,738

What owners name most

The components owners name in their complaints, leaving out "unknown or other".

• Engine 20.5% 1 in 5
• Electrical system 17.2% 1 in 6
• Power train 14.9% 1 in 7
• Steering 10.3% 1 in 10
• Air bags 8.1% 1 in 12
• Service brakes 8.0% 1 in 13
• Fuel/propulsion system 6.3% 1 in 16
• Vehicle speed control 4.7% 1 in 21
• Structure, body 3.9% 1 in 25
• Exterior lighting 3.3% 1 in 30

Share of the 625,987 complaints counted here that name each component. One complaint can name several, so the shares add up to more than 100%. 1 in N = about one complaint in N.

Complaints by model year

Older model years have had longer to accumulate filings, and the newest are still filling in; the shape says as much about time as about the cars.

The newest model years with the most complaints

Model years 2023 to 2025 only. These vehicles have had the least time to accumulate reports, which is what makes a high count here worth a look.

Table 2. Model years 2023 to 2025, ranked by complaints

Source: NHTSA consumer complaints bulk file dated 2026-08-25, counted once per make, model and model year by Oil & Miles. Counts of reports, not rates.

How this compares with other rankings

Other rankings measure different things, so their leaders differ from ours. iSeeCars ranks complaints per 10,000 vehicles sold for model years 2005 to 2016, leaving out models that sold fewer than 750,000.

Lemon Law Experts counted complaints filed from 2015 to 2026 per 100,000 sales, which puts the Chrysler Town & Country first.

CarComplaints.com sets NHTSA filings beside its own reader reports, one page per model year.

This page counts raw filings once per vehicle from the bulk file, model years 2010-2025, with a floor of 10. It says which vehicles owners wrote to the regulator about most, not which failed most often.

A rate shows how often owners report relative to cars sold; a count shows where the reports pile up. Read the two side by side.

For journalists and data users

Everything here is free to quote and republish. Credit Oil & Miles and link to this page.

@dataset{taher_2026_most_complained,
  author    = {Taher, Iqbal},
  title     = {Most Complained-About Vehicles: NHTSA Owner Complaints by Make, Model and Model Year, 2010-2025 (Q3 2026 Edition)},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Oil \& Miles},
  version   = {2026-Q3-r2},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23685716},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23685716}
}

<a href="https://oilandmiles.com/reports/most-complained-cars"><img src="https://oilandmiles.com/assets/img/charts/most-complained-2026-q3.svg" alt="Horizontal bar chart of the ten vehicles with the most NHTSA complaints, model years 2010 to 2025, led by the 2010 Ford Fusion with 5,126" width="1200" height="750"></a>
<p>Diagram: <a href="https://oilandmiles.com/reports/most-complained-cars">Oil &amp; Miles</a>, CC BY 4.0</p>

Editions and changes

This page always carries the latest edition, and each edition is also kept at its own address for citation: Q3 2026. Corrections are made in place and noted here with the date.

• October 27, 2026Wording corrected after a review of the scope, method and comparisons; DOI, mirrors and citation added. Component data re-exported with every component; rankings unchanged.

What changed since the previous edition

This is the first edition, so there's nothing to compare yet. From the next edition on, this section lists which vehicles entered or left the top 25 and which moved most, with the numbers behind each move.