AtWhatMileage
Used-car failure atlas

At what mileage?

Every defect complaint filed with NHTSA carries the odometer reading at the moment something broke. Nobody publishes those readings as distributions, so we do: for 66,828 model years, what fails, at what mileage, how often, and how badly.

Fleet-wide, this is when things get reported

The median odometer reading across every report of each failure, all makes and models together. One car's numbers can look very different — that is the point of the model year pages.

Median
  1. Other engine problem 66k
  2. Other electrical problem 61k
  3. Other powertrain problem 59k
  4. Other body or interior problem 62k
  5. Other steering problem 62k
  6. Other brake problem 44k
  7. Other speed control problem 50k
  8. Other fuel system problem 59k

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

Highest risk, recent model years

Scored against other vehicles of the same model year, so this is not simply a list of the oldest cars. High confidence only.

2025 GMC Yukon

Most reported: other engine problem

Risk 89 75 reports median 3k

2026 GMC Sierra 1500

Most reported: other engine problem

Risk 88 113 reports median 3k

2022 Winnebago Ekko

Most reported: alternator or charging system failure

Risk 88 65 reports median 23k

2019 Audi A6

Most reported: alternator or charging system failure

Risk 87 194 reports median 760

2020 Toyota C-HR

Most reported: complete transmission failure

Risk 87 75 reports median 10k

2024 BMW X5

Most reported: other brake problem

Risk 87 249 reports median 6k

2024 Nissan Versa

Most reported: other engine problem

Risk 87 158 reports median 1k

2022 Rivian R1t

Most reported: other driver assistance problem

Risk 87 104 reports median 12k

2021 Porsche Taycan

Most reported: other electrical problem

Risk 86 99 reports median 925

2023 Nissan Versa

Most reported: other speed control problem

Risk 86 72 reports median 11k

2021 Mazda Mazda3

Most reported: excessive oil consumption

Risk 86 66 reports median 2k

2018 Hyundai Elantra GT

Most reported: other engine problem

Risk 86 73 reports median 800

Lowest risk, same years

Same cohorts, same formula, read from the other end. A low score means owners of that model year filed comparatively little, not that the car is faultless.

Start from a manufacturer

The makes carrying the most owner reports. Report volume tracks sales at least as much as it tracks trouble, so this is an index rather than a ranking. All manufacturers.

By model year

Each year page ranks every vehicle of that year against the others, worst and best, and is the cohort the risk scores are defined against.

How to read any of it

A complaint is not a failure rate. People complain when something expensive breaks early, when a dealer refuses a repair, and when they are frightened. They rarely file anything when a part lasts as long as it should. So a count of 1,200 reports is a floor on how many cars had the problem, never a census, and a car with no reports may simply be rare.

What complaints are unusually good for is timing. The odometer reading in a complaint is the one number in the record that the owner had no reason to shade, and once you have thousands of them for the same failure on the same model year, the shape of the distribution is informative even though any single reading is not. That is the whole basis of this site: we publish the shape, with the sample size next to it, and round the figures to the precision the sample can carry.

Three habits make the numbers useful rather than alarming. First, read the median before the count: a transmission reported at 60,000 miles and one reported at 160,000 are different problems even when the counts match, and only one of them should change what you pay. Second, prefer the per-1,000 column to the raw total wherever it is filled in, because raw totals reward nothing but sales volume. Third, treat the model year as the unit. The same nameplate can be transformed by a mid-generation revision, and the pages here are built one year at a time precisely so that a bad 2013 does not follow a good 2016 around.

What none of this can tell you is whether the specific car in front of you was looked after. Two examples of the same model year differ from each other far more than two model years differ on any chart here, and a documented service history beats every figure on this site. Use these pages to decide what to have inspected and what to argue about on price — that is the job they can actually do.

Every formula is written out on the methodology page, including the ones we are least sure about, and the same numbers are available as JSON under CC BY 4.0.

Questions this page answers

What is AtWhatMileage?

A reference for used-car buyers and owners: for 66,828 model years it publishes what owners reported breaking, at what odometer reading, how often per 1,000 vehicles built, and how severe the consequences were. Every figure is computed from 1,943,536 complaints filed with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Where does the mileage data come from?

Each defect complaint filed with NHTSA carries the odometer reading at the moment the owner says the fault occurred. 1,092,729 of the reports here carry a usable reading. NHTSA publishes the complaints; it does not publish them as mileage distributions, which is what this site computes.

Is complaint data a reliable measure of reliability?

On its own, no, and this site does not claim it is. Owners file when something expensive or frightening happens, not when a part lasts as long as it should, so a complaint count is a floor on how many cars had a problem rather than a rate. What complaints are unusually good for is timing: the odometer reading is the one number in the record the owner had no reason to shade. Read the mileages as the finding and the counts as context.

Is AtWhatMileage free to use?

Yes. Every page is free and needs no account, and the computed figures are available as JSON under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, so they can be quoted or built on with a credit and a link.

Independent, and not a safety authority. This site is not affiliated with NHTSA or with any manufacturer, and nothing here is a recall notice. If you need to know whether a specific vehicle has an open recall, check the VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls, which is authoritative and free. Found a figure that looks wrong? Tell us what and where — corrections are published, not quietly patched.

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed