Methodology

The score answers one question: for each new car sold, how often do owners publicly report a problem? It is an estimate built from public, self-reported data, not a controlled survey.

Which cars

Every US nameplate that averaged at least 5,000 sales a year over 2024–2026 (216 models; passenger vehicles, commercial vans excluded), limited to model years 2024, 2025 and 2026, i.e. cars three years old or newer as of October 2026. Models that went off sale in 2025 are included, since their 2024 and 2025 cars are in that range; models launched in 2025 or later are not, because they have no 2024 sales. Smaller-volume models are left out because their issue counts are too small to compare reliably.

Issue reports

Every post since 1 January 2024 in each model's owner subreddits (for example r/rav4club, r/TeslaModelY, r/Tacoma) is downloaded from the Arctic Shift archive of public Reddit data. Where a model has no active owner subreddit (for example the Chevrolet Equinox, Acura MDX and Mercedes-Benz GLE), its brand's subreddit (r/chevy, r/Acura, r/mercedes_benz) is read instead, keeping only the posts that name the model in the title or the first 500 characters of the body. A model's Reddit posts are used when they hold at least 5 estimated issue reports about 2024+ vehicles (or at least 1,000 posts); sources with few reports count less in the score. Models with neither are scored on their other sources; each model's details list the sources used. Subreddits that are mostly about another market's version of a car (r/KiaSeltos, largely Indian-market Seltos owners) or about something else (r/Kona, the Hawaiian coast; r/Lincoln, the city) are not used, nor are general subreddits dominated by older generations when a current-generation one exists (r/Corvette and r/LandCruisers, where r/C8Corvette and r/LandCruiser250 are used instead).

A brand subreddit misses posts that don't name the model ("my car won't start"), so it finds fewer posts and fewer issue reports per car sold than an owner subreddit would. The community-size adjustment described below makes up most of that: if only a fifth of the posts name the model, the rate is multiplied by about 3.3 (5^0.75), against the 5 needed to undo it fully. Rates from brand subreddits may therefore still run somewhat low, and they count less in the score when they rest on few reports.

A post counts as an issue report when it describes a fault, failure, recall or repair:

Specific failure terms (for example "check engine", "transmission shudder", "water leak", "phantom braking", "recall", "dealer can't fix") count anywhere in the title or the first 1,500 characters of the body.
Generic words ("problem", "issue", "noise", "broken") only count in the title.
Negations like "no issues" or "zero problems" are ignored, and buying, selling and delivery-day posts are excluded.

Owner subreddits also discuss older vehicles. Each post is tagged by the model years it mentions: posts naming 2024–2027 (or a new-generation name such as "4th gen Tacoma", "Juniper" or "ND3") are counted in full; posts naming only older years (back to 1950, including short forms like "'95") or an older generation ("3rd gen Tacoma", "NA" or "NB" Miata, "Mk7" GTI) are dropped. A generation that was still sold as a 2024 model, such as the 5th-gen RAV4, doesn't date a post either way. Posts with no year are counted in proportion to the share of dated issue reports in that subreddit that are about new vehicles. That share is lower than the share among all posts wherever older cars break more often: in r/Miata, 3% of dated issue reports are about 2024+ cars against 7% of all dated posts. Where a subreddit has few dated issue reports, the share is pulled toward the share among all its posts. Subreddits for long-running enthusiast cars (r/Miata, r/GolfGTI, r/WRX) are mostly about older generations, so their estimates are rougher.

Owner forums

Model-specific owner forums (for example tacomaworld.com, rav4world.com, f150gen14.com) are read directly; where a model has no forum of its own, its sections on a brand forum (toyotanation.com, nissanforums.com, hyundai-forums.com, kia-forums.com, vwvortex.com, bimmerfest.com, benzworld.org, swedespeed.com, genesisowners.com, cadillacforums.com, jeepgarage.org, mazdas247.com, mitsubishi-forums.com, rangerovers.net, lincolnforums.com, planet-9.com, lexusenthusiast.com, teslamotorsclub.com) or on insideevsforum.com are used instead. Luxury and performance owners mostly use Internet Brands' forums (clublexus.com, mbworld.org, audiworld.com, acurazine.com, rennlist.com, 6speedonline.com, corvetteforum.com, volvoforums.com, northamericanmotoring.com), which run vBulletin rather than the XenForo software most other forums use; the scraper reads both. It lists the sections of each forum, keeps the ones for the current generation or for problems and maintenance, and records the title and start date of every thread started since 1 January 2024. Thread titles are classified with the same rules as Reddit titles. Sections only about an older generation are mostly left out; where one is read (a section shared by several generations, or audiworld.com's Q5, Q7 and Q8 sections, which are split into one subsection per generation), model years are estimated from the titles the same way as for Reddit posts. Silverado and Sierra share one forum (silveradosierra.com), as do the Colorado and Canyon (coloradofans.com) and Tahoe and Yukon (tahoeyukonforum.com); the Equinox and Terrain share the technical sections of equinoxforum.net, the BMW 3 and 4 Series share bimmerfest.com's G20–G26 section, the CX-90 and CX-70 share Mazdas247's CX-70/CX-90 sections, and the Rivian R1S and R1T share Rivian Forums' R1 sections. Those counts are split in proportion to sales. gr86.org's problem and modification sections also cover the Subaru BRZ, which sells too few to be rated, so they count at the GR86's share of the two cars' sales. tahoeyukonforum.com's Suburban section is shared with the Yukon XL and Escalade ESV, so only threads whose title names the Suburban (or the Escalade) are counted there; the same applies to the Audi Q5 and A5 in vwvortex.com's B9 section, the A6 in its C8 section (shared with the A7), the Volkswagen ID.4 in its ID section (shared with the ID. Buzz) and the Lexus LX in ih8mud.com's Land Cruiser 300 section. Some forums cover only part of a model's range: the Explorer forum is for the ST trim. As with Reddit, a model's forum sections are used when they have at least 5 estimated issue reports (or at least 300 threads). Forums that block automated access or can't be read (explorerforum.com, f150forum.com, camryforums.com, nasioc.com, bimmerpost.com, forum.miata.net) are not used; the details for each model list the forums that are.

NHTSA

Owner complaints filed with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for model years 2024–2026, from the public complaints API. These are separate from Reddit: one person may post in both places.

Adjusting for community size

Owner communities differ enormously in how much they post. For each car sold, r/GR86 gets about 40 times as many posts about 2024+ cars as the median model's subreddits, r/Miata about 14 times, and Chevrolet Malibu owners about a twenty-fifth as many. Across the 138 models with a Reddit score, that difference in posting explains about 90% of the differences in Reddit issue reports per car sold, so an unadjusted count mostly measures how online a car's owners are, not how often it breaks.

Each model's Reddit rate is therefore divided by its community's activity relative to the median model, raised to the power 0.75. Activity is the estimated number of posts about 2024+ vehicles per car sold, whether or not they report a problem. A subreddit that posts 16 times as much as typical has its rate divided by 8 (16^0.75); one that posts a sixteenth as much has its rate multiplied by 8. Forum rates are adjusted the same way, using threads in the sections that are read.

A power of 0 would ignore community size, and a power of 1 would score only the share of posts that report problems, which favors enthusiast communities full of photos and modification posts. 0.75 is the value at which the Reddit and forum rankings agree best with NHTSA complaints per car sold, which don't depend on community size. For Reddit, the rank correlation with NHTSA rises from 0.33 unadjusted to 0.50, and 0.75 was the best value in 84% of bootstrap resamples of the models. The rates in the table and each model's details are adjusted; the details also give the unadjusted rate.

Sales

US sales for calendar years 2024 and 2025 plus January–June 2026, compiled from public sales rankings and manufacturer releases. The sum stands in for the number of 2024–2026 model-year vehicles on the road. Tesla, Lucid and Audi Q4 e-tron figures are Cox Automotive (Kelley Blue Book) estimates, since Tesla and Lucid do not report US sales by model. Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Audi report quarterly, so their figures come from quarterly releases. The Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer are rated together as one line; the electric Wagoneer S is not included. The Audi A5 line includes the A4, which the A5 replaced for 2025; BMW i4 and i5 sales are counted with the 4 and 5 Series; the Escalade includes the ESV but not the electric Escalade IQ; the BMW 7 Series includes the i7; the Mini Cooper includes the Clubman until it ended in 2024; and the Mustang Mach-E and Equinox EV are rated separately from the Mustang and Equinox. The Dodge Charger counts only the current generation, from October 2024: earlier 2024 sales were mostly 2023-model-year cars of the previous one.

The score

For each source, reports are divided by units sold and expressed per 10,000 vehicles.
Reddit and forum rates are adjusted for community size, as described above.
Each model's rate is divided by the median rate across all 216 models, giving an index where 1.0 is typical.
The Reddit, forum and NHTSA indexes are combined with a weighted geometric mean. A source with plenty of reports gets a weight of 1; one with few reports gets less, because a count of 5 can easily be twice or half what it would be over a longer period. A model missing a source is scored on the others. If a model's weights add up to less than 1, the rest is filled with a typical index of 1.0, which pulls a thinly supported score toward 50.
A model missing a source is pulled toward 50 by how much its remaining sources predict a full score. NHTSA complaints and owner posts agree only partly, so a model that stands out on NHTSA alone stands out, on average, about half as much once Reddit and forums are counted too. Among the models scored on all three sources, the full score keeps about 52% of the distance from 50 that NHTSA alone gives, and about 79% of what any two sources give; a model scored on fewer sources keeps the same share.
score = 50 − 25 × log2(index), limited to 0–100. A score of 75 means half as many reports per vehicle as typical; 25 means twice as many.

The weight is the share of a model's difference from typical that is likely to be real rather than chance: weight = s² / (s² + 1/n), where n is the number of reports (for Reddit and forums, plus a term for the size of the community, which is also estimated from a count) and s² is how much that source really varies between models, estimated from the models with at least 20 reports. Reddit and forum indexes vary little between models once community size is accounted for, so they need about 8 (Reddit) and 12 (forums) reports for half weight; NHTSA complaint rates vary more, so 2 complaints get half weight. For example, the Infiniti QX50, scored on NHTSA alone, has 6 complaints, which get a weight of 0.76; that takes it from the 69 its rate alone would give to 64, and keeping 52% of that distance from 50 for its missing sources gives 57.

The score is relative: it compares these 216 models with each other, not against an absolute standard.

Limitations

Self-reporting bias. People post when something goes wrong; happy owners mostly stay quiet. Counts measure how often problems are discussed, which tracks but is not the same as how often they happen.
Community size and culture. Some models have large, very online owner communities (Miata, GR86, Tesla, Rivian, Hyundai and Kia EVs); others have small ones. The adjustment for community size removes most, but by design not all, of that effect, and it can't tell a community that posts a lot because its cars have problems from one that just likes to post. The "share of posts that are issue reports" in each model's details gives a fully size-independent view.
Enthusiast skew. Owners of trucks, off-roaders and performance trims modify and scrutinize their vehicles more, and report more noises and rattles.
Keyword classification. A keyword match is not a human judgment. Some issue posts are missed and some non-issues are counted. In a hand-checked random sample of 200 counted posts (October 2026), 165 were genuine problem reports, 29 were not (mostly buying questions and news about recalls), and 6 couldn't be judged; about 14 of the genuine reports were about pre-2024 vehicles. Missed reports (false negatives) haven't been measured. Every post that was counted is listed in data/reddit_issue_posts.csv in the repository for auditing.
Model year detection. "2024" in a post may be a purchase date rather than a model year.
Exposure time. A 2024 car has had more time to develop problems than a 2026 car; models whose sales are weighted toward recent months look slightly better.
Sales timing. Calendar-year sales are an approximation of model-year volumes, and sales sources disagree by a few percent for some models.
Owners outside the US. Sales are US-only, but some subreddits and forums also draw owners from other markets. That inflates the rates of models sold abroad under the same name, notably the Ford Ranger (sold worldwide since 2022). Posts and threads that name a pre-2024 model year are dropped, which removes some of this, and subreddits dominated by another market are not used.
Forums. Only thread titles are read, not the posts inside them, so forum threads with vague titles are missed more often than Reddit posts. Forum coverage is uneven: some models have a busy dedicated forum and others have none that could be read. The same owner may post a problem on Reddit and on a forum.

Reproducing and refreshing

The repository contains the scripts and the stored dataset. python scripts/nhtsa.py, python scripts/reddit.py, python scripts/forums.py and python scripts/score.py rebuild everything; a GitHub Actions workflow runs them monthly. Sales figures are in data/sales.csv, with sources in data/sales_sources.md.