Methodology

Sources and refreshes

Complaints, recall campaigns, investigations, and NCAP crash-test ratings come from NHTSA. Fuel-economy estimates come from the EPA. A scheduled ingestion run replaces each successful model-year snapshot and publishes nothing when any requested source reports a failure.

Buyer decisions and complaint comparisons

TireKick issues one of four buyer decisions: buy, buy with conditions, avoid, or insufficient evidence. A decision considers exposure-adjusted complaint rates when production data exists, complaint concentration by component, serious-outcome flags, recalls, investigations, and the amount of evidence available. An avoid decision requires both a poor exposure-adjusted comparison and a serious safety signal. Raw complaint volume alone never produces a buy or avoid call.

Raw counts remain visible as source evidence, but they are not adjusted for vehicle population, age, or miles driven. A popular car can collect more reports because more examples exist. Zero reports can also mean low volume or incomplete matching. The current UI calls this an owner-reported problem signal, not a reliability score. TireKick does not crown a best or worst model year from raw volume. Owner-complaint lists stay empty until exposure and time-at-risk normalization can support a meaningful comparison.

Mileage windows use the middle half of valid mileages in the displayed complaint sample. They describe when reports appeared, not when a failure will occur on a particular vehicle.

Recalls and investigations

Recall totals count NHTSA campaigns associated with a model year. They do not say whether a specific VIN is included or whether its repair remains incomplete. Investigations are agency reviews, not findings that a defect exists.

Crash tests and fuel economy

Crash scores are NHTSA NCAP ratings and may not exist for every trim or year. Displayed model- year MPG is the median EPA combined estimate across available trims; trim tables show the source estimates directly. These are laboratory estimates, not measured owner mileage.

Published methodology versions

Every authority and guide links to the exact version that produced it. These identifiers bind the release to its eligibility, policy, confidence, extraction, and backtest contracts.

Corrections

Agency naming differs across datasets, so TireKick maintains explicit make and model aliases. A bad mapping can create missing or misplaced records. Verify important facts at NHTSA and fueleconomy.gov, and report suspected mapping errors to the site operator.