I was at lunch with an old friend yesterday who told me that both of his family’s cars had been recalled this year. One was for a relatively minor issue, but one involved a leak in the fuel tank. It made me wonder whether my trusty Prius had been recalled for anything besides the tire pressure label the dealer had told me about.
I promptly went online to the recall database search feature of our federal Department of Transportation, and lo and behold, my trusty Prius had FIVE RECALL ISSUES. Seriously? Five?
I dug a little deeper to see what was wrong with my car. Two of them had to do with the steering shaft, warning me ominously that the “Steering Intermediate Extension Shaft may Fail.” One was the label I knew about; one the accelerator sticking issue that got so much press a few years ago, and one was a potential stall problem due to a faulty water pump.
I wondered if my Prius were especially prone to recall, so I started looking up different vehicles at random. A 2013 Acura MDX has six recall issues; a 2011 Cadillac Escalade has three. Both the 2012 Mercury Mariner and the 2010 BMW 535i fared better, with only one issue each.
According to personal injury lawyers Tenn and Tenn, there are approximately 7.8 million vehicles currently under recall from 10 different automakers. The Wall Street Journal has spent more time with the database than I did, compiling a list of the ten cars that cost owners the most time (up to 14 hours per each recall issue). Topping the list is the Chevy Cruz, which was recalled an average of 4.8 separate times per model. The Toyota RAV4 was right behind it with 4.7 recalls per vehicle. Not close to the infamous Chevy Malibu of a few years ago, though, whose five different recalls affected 2.44 million vehicles.
It does seem as though there are more cars currently being recalled than ever before. For those interested in such things, bankrate.com has compiled a history of vehicle recalls going back forty years, and Money Magazine wrote of the five biggest recalls in history.