About RecallGarage

What This Site Does

RecallGarage builds one page for each vehicle model year. Each page pulls every NHTSA recall campaign that names that year and shows how complaint counts have trended over time.

We don't write these pages by hand. We pull directly from NHTSA's public recall and complaint databases, organize the data by make, model, and year, and publish it so you can see the pattern at a glance. When we say "complaint trend," we mean counts of complaints filed with NHTSA. We never ingest or publish the text of individual complaints, only the numbers.

Who It's For

• Used-car shoppers who want to check a model year's recall history before they buy.
• Current owners who want to understand what's been recalled on their car's model year and what to watch for.
• Private sellers who want to answer buyer questions with real data instead of guesswork.

If you're comparing a 2015 sedan to a 2018 version of the same car, our pages let you see the recall and complaint pattern for each year side by side.

What This Site Is Not

A few things RecallGarage does not do:

• We are not a VIN decoder. We don't look up your specific vehicle identification number or tell you what options your car has.
• We are not legal or repair advice. Our pages describe what NHTSA has published. They don't tell you what to do about a specific vehicle, and they aren't a substitute for a mechanic or a lawyer.
• We never tell you that your car is affected by a recall. This is important, so we'll say it plainly: recall campaigns cover specific VIN ranges within a model year, not every car built that year. A recall notice for "2016 Model X" does not mean every 2016 Model X has the problem. It means some of them, identified by VIN, do.

How to Check Your Own Car

Since we can't tell you if your specific car is affected, here's what to do instead:

1. Find your 17-character VIN on your registration, insurance card, or the driver's side dashboard.
2. Go to nhtsa.gov/recalls and enter it. This lookup is free and it's the only way to know for sure whether your exact vehicle is included in a campaign.
3. If your VIN is affected, the repair is free at any franchised dealer for that brand. You don't pay for parts or labor on an open recall.

Our model-year pages are the starting point. The VIN lookup is the finish line.

About Das Creative

RecallGarage is published by Das Creative LLC, a small US data operation. We build pipelines on public government data and turn them into pages that are easier to scan than the raw database. We don't editorialize the numbers. We don't add commentary that isn't backed by the source data. If a page says a complaint count went up in a given year, that's because NHTSA's own data shows it did.

We built this site because recall information is public but not always easy to read. A model year can carry a dozen separate campaigns filed over several years, each with its own scope. Laying that history out on one page, in plain terms, is the whole point.

If you have a correction to report or a question about how we source our data, you can reach us through the contact information on this site.