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KarelCar

About KarelCar

Free, data-driven research for used-car buyers: what goes wrong with a model year, what has been recalled, how it performed in crash tests and what it is worth.

What we do

Buying a used car means betting on a vehicle you don’t know. KarelCar brings the public record together on one page for each make, model and year: owner complaints filed with the U.S. government, safety recalls, crash-test ratings, a reliability score and, where available, current market values. Our free VIN decoder tells you exactly which vehicle you’re looking at.

Where our data comes from

  • NHTSA owner complaints. Reports that drivers file with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. We group them by the part of the car involved, to show the most common problem areas.
  • NHTSA safety recalls. Every recall campaign that covers the model year, with the risk and the free remedy.
  • NHTSA 5-Star Safety Ratings (NCAP). Frontal, side and rollover crash-test results.
  • VIN decoding. NHTSA’s vPIC database, supplemented by commercial VIN data providers.
  • Market values. Estimates from commercial vehicle valuation providers, based on vehicles in clean condition.

We refresh NHTSA data regularly, and each page shows when it was last checked.

How we score reliability

Each model year gets a score from 0 to 100, calculated the same way for every vehicle:

  1. Every model year starts at 100.
  2. Complaint volume: up to 40 points off, on a logarithmic scale. Going from 10 to 100 complaints costs as much as going from 100 to 1,000.
  3. Recalls: 2 points off per safety recall, up to 15.
  4. Severity: up to 15 points off for complaints involving crashes, fires, injuries or deaths (deaths weigh five times as much).

The score is a quick guide, not a verdict. Popular vehicles collect more complaints simply because there are more of them on the road, so compare scores between similar vehicles, and read the problems listed on each page. A pre-purchase inspection is still the best protection.

How we make money

The site is free. Some links to dealers and listing sites are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission if you use them, at no extra cost to you. Commissions never change our data or scores. See our Affiliate Disclosure.

Contact

Found an error, or want to work with us? Get in touch or email support@karelcar.com.