Author

James Han is a car enthusiast and a data engineer. James started Car Reliability Rankings to give used car shoppers a straight answer to one question: which model years are worth buying, and which ones should you avoid?

Why James Started This Site

Shopping for a used car usually means sorting through opinions, forum threads and star ratings that rarely say how they were made. The facts are out there. Owners file complaints with NHTSA, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and every recall is on record. But the raw data is hard to read, and a popular car always looks worse, simply because there are more of them on the road.

As a data engineer, James saw a way to turn that public record into something a shopper can use in a minute: one score per model year, worked out the same way for every car, adjusted for how many were made and compared with cars of the same age. That became the reliability rating system behind every page on this site.

How the Ratings Are Made

James sets the rules of the rating system and signs off on every data update before it goes live. No score is changed by hand, and no automaker or dealer pays for a score, a ranking or a placement.

The problem lists on each model year page come from reading every one of the 71,410 owner complaints, one by one, so a page says what owners actually reported rather than what a keyword search guessed.

Get in Touch

Questions, corrections and suggestions for the next models to cover are welcome through the contact page.