How we source data
Measured data and editorial writing are kept apart.
Not everything on a page carries the same weight. We show where each piece came from and how much is actually behind it.
Safety records
Complaint counts, the component breakdown and recall campaigns come from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation, queried per model year. NHTSA data is in the US public domain. Every figure is shown with the date it was retrieved, because complaint counts only ever grow and an undated number quietly becomes wrong.
What a complaint count is not
It is a count of reports filed, not a failure rate. A car that sold in large numbers will always show more complaints than a rare one, and a problem that drew press attention draws more reports. Use it to see where reports concentrate on one car, not to rank two cars against each other.
Fuel economy and engine data
City, highway and combined figures come from the EPA's fueleconomy.gov records for that model year, along with displacement, cylinder count, transmission and drive type. Each engine variant carries the EPA record ID it came from, so any number can be checked against its source.
Documented problems
A single owner complaint is not a documented problem. A file gets written when the same mechanism appears across independent sources and can be explained rather than just reported. Problem files describe how a failure happens; how often it is reported comes from the NHTSA figures on the vehicle page, not from the file.
Photographs
Catalogue photos come from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences, cropped and resized to fit the page. Each photo carries its own credit on the vehicle file it illustrates: the photographer, the file it came from, the licence, and what was changed. Manufacturer press photos are not used — those libraries are licensed for editorial use only, and a Creative Commons licence cannot be withdrawn once given, which is what a permanent record needs.
What we will and will not cite
Sources come from the party that is accountable for what they say: US government records for safety and economy data, manufacturers and their official channels for how a vehicle was built, the original equipment makers for how a component works, and standards bodies and court-appointed administrators for the rest. Openly edited references such as Wikipedia, forums and user comments, news aggregators, and third-party copies of documents are not cited — a copy may be accurate, but the site hosting it is not the one answerable for it, so we link the original or nothing. Where a claim has no source that meets this bar, the claim is dropped rather than propped up.
Corrections
Wrong or incomplete information is updated when new evidence turns up, and each vehicle file carries its own last-updated date. If you find an error, tell us the car, the field, the correct value and where it comes from.
Trademarks
Manufacturer names, model names and logos are the trademarks of their owners. They are used here only to identify which vehicle is being described. OtoCarFix has no partnership, dealership or authorised-service relationship with any manufacturer, and none of them endorse this site.