How WhichTrim decides what goes on a page

Everything on a record page comes from a public record or a manufacturer’s own document: NHTSA’s recall filings, owner complaints, defect investigations, manufacturer communications and crash ratings; the EPA’s fuel-economy certifications; manufacturers’ press kits and spec sheets; and a small number of other public sources that are named where they are used. The coverage page lists every source, how often each is refreshed and where the coverage stops.

Figures are shown with the record they came from. Federal text — the wording of a recall filing, a bulletin summary, an owner’s complaint — is quoted as it was filed, with only personal details removed from complaints. We do not correct federal records silently: if a source is wrong, the page says so and shows what the source says.

WhichTrim adds three kinds of thing to the public record, and each is marked as ours:

• Structure and arithmetic — which records belong to which vehicle, counts, rankings, the Safety Signal grade and the comparisons. The methodology shows how the grade and the numbers are calculated.
• Plain-English readings — for example the short summary under a recall filing, or the take on a comparison. These are written with the help of a language model from the record shown on the same page, are marked as WhichTrim’s where they appear, and never replace the record: a recall’s filing is always quoted in full above its summary.
• Guides and studies — long-form explanations and analyses, covered below.

We do not publish reviews, road tests or opinions about which car to buy, and nothing on the site is sponsored.

Guides explain what a kind of record is and what a reader can do with it. They are researched and drafted by WhichTrim with the help of AI writing tools, from the primary sources listed at the end of each guide — the regulation, statute or agency publication a rule comes from. Every rule of law or method a guide states is checked against that source before it is published.

The figures in a guide are not written in by hand. They are computed from the same records the rest of the site publishes and are recalculated whenever those records change, so a guide’s numbers stay current without anyone editing them. A guide carries the date it was published and says how it was made.

Studies and the quarterly reports are analyses of the record. Each one explains its method on the page and publishes its data, so it can be checked and reused.

If something on WhichTrim is wrong, tell us and include the page address. Corrections are the messages we read first.

• If we misread or mismatched a record, we fix it and the correction appears with the next nightly build.
• If the source itself is wrong, we do not overwrite it. We say on the page what the source says and why it appears wrong, and we tell the reader where to confirm it.
• If a guide states something inaccurately, we correct the guide and change its revision date.

WhichTrim is not affiliated with any manufacturer, dealer, NHTSA or the EPA. Advertisers and affiliate partners have no access to the data before it is published and no say over any page, grade, ranking or guide, and no page can be paid for.

Display advertising appears only on public reading pages, is always labeled “Advertisement”, and never sits above the data or on the account, pricing, API documentation or company pages. Affiliate links are disclosed where they appear. How the site pays for itself is set out on the About page.

WhichTrim is responsible for everything published on this site. Questions about these standards, and anything else, go through the contact page.