AtWhatMileage
Engine · 5 owner reports

No-start or intermittent start failure on the 2014 Chevrolet Spark

Only 5 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 5
With an odometer reading 5
Reports per 1,000 built 0.3 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 20%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $200–$1,800
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 13th

When no-start or intermittent start failure gets reported

There are 5 reports of no-start or intermittent start failure on the 2014 Chevrolet Spark, 5 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 13th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 5 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 39,000 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $200–$1,800 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure, every year of the Chevrolet Spark

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 2013 Chevrolet Spark no-start or intermittent start failure 2k
  2. 2014 (this one) 39k
  3. 2015 Chevrolet Spark no-start or intermittent start failure 18k
  4. 2021 Chevrolet Spark no-start or intermittent start failure
    no odometer readings given
    —

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

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Went to store a couple miles from home, came out of store and car would not start. Thinking maybe the battery was at fault I tried jumping the battery and still nothing so turned the ignition off and took keys and got ride home. Then upon returning to store to pick up items purchased the car was running without the keys and the ignition was in the off position. I had the woman come out of the store to see this. And it also freaked me out on how this could happen. Then I called vic koenig in carbondale, illinois where I purchased the car, and at first they said it wasn`t covered under warranty because it had 39,000 and warranty ran out at 36,000 and that they never heard of that where a car just starts up without the ignition turned on. They wanted me to bring it in, I was afraid to even drive it so I called napa down the road and a couple of there mechanics come over to see that it had started with the ignition turned off. So then they gave me a ride home and the other one took the car back to napa garage to disconnect the battery cable and see if that would shut it off, for I did not even want to step foot in the car.

39,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1296188 filed 2016-07-07

Went to store a couple miles from home, came out of store and car would not start. Thinking maybe the battery was at fault I tried jumping the battery and still nothing so turned the ignition off and took keys and got ride home. Then upon returning to store to pick up items purchased the car was running without the keys and the ignition was in the off position. I had the woman come out of the store to see this. And it also freaked me out on how this could happen. Then I called vic koenig in carbondale, illinois where I purchased the car, and at first they said it wasn`t covered under warranty because it had 39,000 and warranty ran out at 36,000 and that they never heard of that where a car just starts up without the ignition turned on. They wanted me to bring it in, I was afraid to even drive it so I called napa down the road and a couple of there mechanics come over to see that it had started with the ignition turned off. So then they gave me a ride home and the other one took the car back to napa garage to disconnect the battery cable and see if that would shut it off, for I did not even want to step foot in the car.

39,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1296189 filed 2016-07-07

Key fob hinge is faulty, made out of potter's metal I've had now 3 key's in the span of 3 year's break due to them breaking off at the hinge and the engine won't start due to the manufacturer having an anti theft protection. They key's will last for the span of approximately 10,000-15,000 miles then failure will happen shortly following. This effect's car's when trying to start.

58,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1403632 filed 2017-08-26

Also reported on the 2014 Chevrolet Spark

Other engine problem

38 reports median 18k

Other powertrain problem

27 reports median 57k

Seat belt or retractor failure

16 reports median 51k

Other electrical problem

16 reports median 39k

Other speed control problem

16 reports median 52k

Other body or interior problem

15 reports median 31k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 5 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 5 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does no-start or intermittent start failure happen on the 2014 Chevrolet Spark?

Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 40,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is no-start or intermittent start failure on the 2014 Chevrolet Spark?

5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.3 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

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