All manufacturers
908 makes, 12,767 models and 1,943,536 owner reports. Names and spellings follow NHTSA's own records, which is why a few marques appear that no longer exist and why some are spelled the way a government database spells them.
The makes with the most reports on file
Longer is not worse. This is a chart of how many of each brand's vehicles are on American roads at least as much as of how they hold up, which is exactly why every comparison elsewhere on this site is made inside a single model year and, wherever a fleet estimate exists, per 1,000 vehicles built.
Every manufacturer
What a brand total is worth
Very little on its own, and it is worth being blunt about that on the page that publishes it. A manufacturer's report count is the sum of every complaint filed about every vehicle it sold since 1996, which means it rises with sales volume, with how long the brand has been in the American market, and with how many of its cars are old enough to break. A brand that sells three million vehicles a year in the United States will always out-report one that sells eighty thousand, however carefully the second one is built.
Reports per model, in the last column, is no better as a verdict. It divides one number that tracks sales by another that tracks how many nameplates a company has used, so a make with two high-volume models scores worse than a make with twenty niche ones for reasons that have nothing to do with either car. Both columns are here because they are the honest way to size the database, not because they rank anybody.
The comparison that does hold is a model year against the other vehicles of the same model year. That is what the risk score does: it ranks a vehicle inside its own cohort, weights each failure by how bad its consequences were, and — wherever a recall filing gives a fleet size to divide by — expresses the result per 1,000 vehicles built rather than as a raw count. So the useful path through this page is to pick a make, then a model, then the year you are actually looking at buying, and read the numbers there.
One practical note on the names. NHTSA records the manufacturer as it was filed, so you will find defunct marques, badge-engineered twins listed separately, and the occasional spelling that no marketing department would approve. We have not tidied any of it, because renaming a make would break the link between what this site says and what the federal record says, and that link is the only reason to trust the numbers. If a make you expect is missing, it is filed under a spelling the search box will usually find; if it really is absent, tell us.
Questions this page answers
How many manufacturers does this site cover?
908, covering 12,767 models. The list follows NHTSA's own manufacturer records, so it includes marques that no longer sell cars in the United States and spells a few names the way a federal database spells them.
Which car brand has the most complaints?
Ford, with 332,852 owner reports on file across every model and model year. That is close to a measure of how many vehicles a brand has sold in America rather than of how good they are, which is why the per-vehicle rates on the model year pages are the figures worth comparing.
Can I compare two manufacturers directly?
Not usefully, and this site does not offer it. A brand total mixes a fleet van with a sports car and twenty years of model changes, so the comparison says almost nothing. Compare two model years instead: that is a like-for-like question, and the compare tool answers it with reports per 1,000 vehicles for both sides.
Reports per model says more about how long a make has been selling high-volume cars in America than about its engineering. Compare individual model years instead — that is what the risk score is for.
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