How to check a used car for open recalls before you buy

Federal recall law draws a line between new and used cars. When a manufacturer notifies its dealers of a safety recall, a dealer holding a new vehicle covered by it may sell or lease that vehicle only after the defect has been remedied, before delivery. The dealer may still offer the car for sale; it may not hand it over unrepaired.

The same rule reaches large rental fleets. A rental company running a fleet of 35 or more rental vehicles may not rent, sell or lease one under an open recall until it is fixed, and it must comply as soon as practicable and within 24 hours of receiving the recall notice (48 hours when the notice covers more than 5,000 vehicles in its fleet). If the remedy is not ready but the notice specifies a temporary fix that removes the risk, the company may rent the car once that fix is done — but still may not sell or lease it.

Used cars sit outside both rules. In a 2016 statement the Federal Trade Commission said it directly: federal law requires new cars to be free of recalls, does not prohibit dealers from selling used cars with open recalls, and gives no federal agency the power to ban those sales across the industry. Nothing in those federal rules reaches a private sale either.

What federal law does guarantee is the repair. A recall remedy is free when the vehicle is presented for it, whoever owns the car now, as long as it was first sold no more than 15 calendar years before the recall notice. But federal law does not require an owner to get the work done, so an open recall can pass from one owner to the next unrepaired.

For scale: in the last twelve months manufacturers filed 391 recall campaigns covering the vehicles on this site, naming 40,096,292 vehicles as potentially affected.

Every recall check starts with the vehicle identification number, the 17-character code that belongs to one car and no other. NHTSA points to three places to find it: the lower left corner of the windshield, the registration card, and sometimes the insurance card.

At a dealer there is a fourth. The FTC’s Buyers Guide, which dealers must display on the used cars they offer for sale, has a space for the VIN, and the current form tells the buyer to check for open safety recalls using that number.

Take the number from the car itself rather than from a listing or a photo of the paperwork. One mistyped character returns another car’s record, or none. If the VIN on the windshield, the title and the Buyers Guide do not match, that is a question for the seller before it is a question for the recall lookup.

1. Enter the VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls.
   The lookup is free and asks for nothing but the number. It also accepts a license plate, but plate results come from state motor-vehicle records and can return a car that carried the same plate before; the VIN is the surer search.
2. Read the whole result.
   It either reports no unrepaired recalls or lists each open one. The next section explains what each outcome means for a buyer.
3. Run the same VIN on the manufacturer’s own recall site.
   A manufacturer that built, imported or sold 25,000 or more light vehicles for the U.S. market in the current or prior calendar year must run a free VIN lookup, linked from its main U.S. website, with no registration and no sales messages on the page. It must list open safety recalls first, with NHTSA’s campaign number, the date the defect was reported, a description of the risk and the remedy; say plainly when a car is covered but the remedy is not yet available; cover at least the last 15 years of recalls; and be refreshed at least once every seven days, showing the date of its last update. NHTSA’s lookup displays the data manufacturers send it under the same rule; a second look at the source takes a minute.
4. Look up the model as well as the car.
   A search by year, make and model at NHTSA — or the model-year page on this site — shows the recalls, investigations, owner complaints and manufacturer communications for the model. It cannot speak for one car, but it tells you what to ask about.
5. Check again just before you pay.
   VINs are added to new campaigns continuously, and one filed in the last few days may not have every VIN attached yet. A clean result from last month is last month’s answer.

How often the third outcome comes up: of the recall campaigns on this site, 236 (6%) were filed saying no remedy was available yet.

Just as important is what the lookup leaves out. NHTSA lists the gaps itself:

• recalls already repaired;
• some recently announced recalls for which not all VINs have been identified yet;
• recalls more than 15 years old, unless the manufacturer offers longer coverage;
• recalls by small manufacturers, including some ultra-luxury and specialty brands;
• manufacturer customer-service and other campaigns that are not safety recalls — the territory of service bulletins and warranty extensions;
• recalls involving an international vehicle.

A few recalls come with an instruction that applies before any repair appointment: park outside and away from buildings because the defect can start a fire, even with the car parked and switched off, or do not drive the vehicle at all until it is repaired. And when a remedy will take time to develop, NHTSA requires an interim notice that tells owners about any short-term steps that lessen the risk in the meantime.

These warnings belong to the car, not to its owner, and they do not lapse when it changes hands. If the lookup shows an open recall, read its details before the test drive rather than after the car has spent a night in your garage.

117 recall campaigns on this site carry one of these warnings — 75 with a park-outside warning and 43 with a do-not-drive warning. Every one is listed here.

• Has the recall work been done? Ask for the repair order. A completed recall drops out of the VIN lookup, so the paperwork and the lookup should tell the same story.
• If a recall is open, will it be repaired before the sale? A dealer franchised for the brand will normally do the work at no charge, wherever the car was bought. For an independent lot or a private seller, that means a trip to one.
• Is the remedy available yet? If the lookup says it is not, ask what interim instructions came with the recall letter and whether the car has been kept to them.
• Do you still have the recall letters? They set out the risk, the remedy and any interim steps in the manufacturer’s own words.
• What does “inspected” cover? A multi-point inspection is not a recall check. In 2016 the FTC brought cases against sellers that advertised rigorous inspections without clearly disclosing that some of the cars had unrepaired recalls.

These answers do not replace the lookup. They tell you whether the seller has already done it.

The recall system reaches owners by mail. Within 60 days of notifying NHTSA of a recall, the manufacturer must send a first-class letter to registered owners, and both the letter and the envelope are marked as an important safety recall. A manufacturer can only write to an owner it knows about, so the letter for a car you just bought may go to the last owner. Registering the car in your name helps close that gap; checking the VIN yourself closes it sooner. NHTSA’s own advice is to check for recalls twice a year.

1. Book the repair with a dealer for the brand.
   Give the VIN and the campaign number and ask whether parts are in stock. The repair is free to you as a later owner, within the 15-year limit; for an older car the manufacturer is not required to fix it free but may still offer to.
2. If a dealer refuses, go to the manufacturer.
   NHTSA’s advice is to notify the manufacturer immediately. If the problem is still not resolved, you can file a complaint with NHTSA.
3. Let the next campaign come to you.
   NHTSA offers email alerts and its SaferCar app. This site’s free recall alerts email you when a new campaign is filed against your model year; you then confirm your own VIN. Buying for a lot or a fleet? Recall Watch checks a list of VINs against each night’s new campaigns and keeps a dated record.

Recall repairs that were never done: the completion record, campaign by campaign →

• 49 U.S.C. 30120 — Remedies for defects and noncompliance (free remedy; limits on sale, lease and rental)
• 49 U.S.C. 30102 — Definitions (rental company, covered rental vehicle)
• 49 CFR 573.15 — Public availability of motor vehicle recall information
• NHTSA — Check for recalls by VIN or license plate
• NHTSA — Motor Vehicle Safety Defects and Recalls: What Every Vehicle Owner Should Know
• NHTSA — Risk-Based Processes for Safety Defect Analysis and Management of Recalls (DOT HS 812 984)
• FTC — Statement of the Commission concerning auto recall advertising cases (December 15, 2016)
• FTC — Used car Buyers Guide (16 CFR Part 455)