The most recalled car models, in six registers

A make is recalled often because it sells a lot of cars. A model is a narrower thing: it is the answer to the question an owner actually asks. Each register below is counted on its own terms, from the model field that authority publishes, and a notice that names four models counts once for each of them. The registers are not added together, because the same defect is filed separately in each country and the same model is spelled differently in each file. Counts are re-taken every day from the rows this site holds.

The Netherlands is not on this page. The RDW publishes the maker and the campaign but no model field, so there is nothing here to count, and a guess made from the description would be this site's guess rather than the register's word. America is coarser than the rest: NHTSA publishes no model field, only a sentence naming the vehicles, and that sentence is split the same way the other registers' lists are. The other five are counted from the model field in the notice itself. Japan is the odd one among those five: MLIT names a vehicle by its chassis designation rather than by a marketing name, so that is what the Japanese column shows. How the reading is done is set out in the method.

Also in the record: The record by decade · How long each manufacturer takes · The most recalled makes · Recalls by year · This week in the record