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Home›Studies› Filed without a fix

236 recalls filed with no fix. 97 never say when.

Study · 2026-10-02

Recalled with no fix, and never told when

236 recall campaigns were filed with no repair available. 106 later record the repair arriving and 33 give an expected date — but 97 say nothing about when at all.

Photo: Omar Sabra / Unsplash
Filed without a repairof 3,661 campaigns 236
Never say whennot then, not since 41%
Later record it arrivingdated, after the fact 106
Median expected waitwhere a date is promised 6.1 mo

How this was measured

Source: NHTSA CORRECTIVE_ACTION

Correction, 2026-10-02

The first version of this study, published earlier the same day, said 197 campaigns never say when a fix is coming. That was wrong. It rested on our claim that NHTSA never updates this text after filing — and NHTSA plainly does: every one of the campaigns here that carries a completed repair timeline has an owner-notification date later than its own filing date, a median of 139 days later. 106 campaigns record the repair arriving, and the first version counted all of them as silence. The correct figure is 97. The error was ours, it was in the direction that made the finding look worse than it is, and the evidence was in filings we had already read.

NHTSA records what a manufacturer intends to do about a defect in a free-text field. What that field says about the state of the repair is written in the language of the filing, so it answers "did a repair exist when this was filed?" and never "does one exist today" — only a VIN lookup answers that. But the field is revised: many campaigns later gain the date the real owner-notification letters went out, which is the manufacturer recording, after the fact, that the repair arrived.

The classifier that reads it was measured against 160 hand-labelled campaigns: precision 0.99, recall 1.00. It separates three states, because collapsing them lies in one direction or the other: filed with no repair; phased, where a fix exists for some model years and not others (22 campaigns here, counted separately); and a repair described at filing.

Where a manufacturer states a date, a vague phrase is mapped to the middle of the period it names — “November 2026” to mid-November, “mid-2024” to the end of June. The manufacturer's exact words are in the table and in the data file, so you can apply your own convention.

What we threw away

Some filings give a stated date that falls before the filing date. Reading them, the cause is usually in the source: a typo'd year, or dates belonging to a superseded campaign the text also mentions. Those rows are dropped rather than published, and they are a warning to anyone parsing dates out of this field.

This is not a verdict on one car

Whether a specific vehicle has an outstanding repair is settled by VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls, free.

Who files without a fix, and who then says when

Source: NHTSA

Read this table the right way round

A manufacturer can only appear in the right-hand column if it tells owners when to expect a fix. Ford Motor Company alone is 64% of every dated campaign in this study, which means any ranking by stated wait is close to a ranking of that one company — and it earns its place there by disclosing. The manufacturers worth worrying about are the ones in the left column with a zero on the right: 11 of the 18 manufacturers here file recalls without a repair and have never once said when one is due.

ManufacturerCampaignsFiled with no repairOf those, say when
Daimler Vans USA, LLC11522.6%never
Ford Motor Company58412.8%33%
Chrysler (FCA US, LLC)22011.8%19%
General Motors, LLC16010%12%
Jaguar Land Rover North America, LLC1378.8%never
Mazda North American Operations527.7%never
Hyundai Motor America1616.2%never
BMW of North America, LLC2085.8%8%
Nissan North America, Inc1454.8%29%
Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturi…1514.6%never
Porsche Cars North America, Inc904.4%50%
Honda (American Honda Motor Co.)1234.1%40%
General Motors LLC1093.7%never
Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC3293.6%never
Chrysler (FCA US LLC)1632.5%never
Subaru of America, Inc621.6%never
Volkswagen Group of America, Inc2681.5%never
Kia America, Inc701.4%never

Manufacturers with at least 40 campaigns on file. “Never” means no campaign from that manufacturer has ever carried a date.

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The longest stated waits

Source: NHTSA
WaitCampaignManufacturerManufacturer saysVehicles
26.8 mo24V951000Ford Motor CompanyMarch 202730,715
22.6 mo24V896000Chrysler (FCA US, LLC)October 2026317,630
17.8 mo25V347000Ford Motor CompanyNovember 2026492,145
16.7 mo25V732000Ford Motor CompanyMarch 202792,347
15.1 mo25V614000Ford Motor CompanyDecember 2026332,778
13.2 mo23V411000Chrysler (FCA US, LLC)July 202480,629
12.1 mo25V467000Ford Motor CompanyJuly 2026694,271
11.2 mo25V685000Ford Motor CompanySeptember 202659,006
10.6 mo25V552000Chrysler (FCA US, LLC)July 2026219,577
10.2 mo25V586000Chrysler (FCA US, LLC)July 202653,849
9.7 mo26V402000Ford Motor CompanyApril 2027741,195
9 mo26V012000Ford Motor CompanyOctober 20262,403
8.7 mo23V598000Ford Motor Company2nd Quarter 2024177,402
7.4 mo26V117000Ford Motor CompanyOctober 2026604,533
7.4 mo25V827000Ford Motor CompanyJuly 202611,852
7.2 mo26V368000Ford Motor CompanyJanuary 2027548,463
6.6 mo26V547000Ford Motor CompanyMarch 2027148,663
6.1 mo26V299000Ford Motor CompanyNovember 202616,200
6.1 mo26V451000Ford Motor CompanyJanuary 2027387,911
6.1 mo26V448000Ford Motor CompanyJanuary 2027288,314
6.1 mo23V841000Porsche Cars North America, In…mid-202441,345
6 mo26V238000Ford Motor CompanyOctober 2026140,201
5.7 mo26V343000Ford Motor CompanyNovember 20261,536
5.6 mo23V033000Porsche Cars North America, In…July 202324,467
5.5 mo25V470000BMW of North America, LLCDecember 31, 2025136

The “manufacturer says” column is their own wording, verbatim. Every campaign number links to its filing.

The data behind this

Everything above, as files. No key, no form, no attribution beyond the line below — if it is useful, use it.

CSV — every dated campaign · JSON

How to cite

WhichTrim, “Filed without a fix: recalls with no repair available”, 2026-10-02. https://whichtrim.com/studies/parts-trap/

The underlying records are U.S. federal public-domain data from NHTSA. The joins, the filtering and the arithmetic are ours, and we would rather be credited than not — but the figures are checkable from the source either way, which is the point.

Questions about this study

Source: NHTSA recall filings

Does this mean my car is unsafe to drive?

It does not say that either way. It says the manufacturer had no repair ready on the day it filed. If a campaign carries a park-outside or do-not-drive advisory, that is on the campaign's own page and you should act on it today. Otherwise the thing to do is check your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls, which is free and settles it for your specific car.

Why is one manufacturer all over the table?

Because it tells owners when to expect a fix, and most manufacturers do not. Appearing here is a consequence of disclosure. The manufacturers that file recalls without a repair and never state a date do not appear in the wait table at all, which is exactly the wrong way for a table to work — so the manufacturer section above reports both columns.

Is 'no repair available' unusual?

It is a minority of campaigns but not a rare event, and it is legal: a manufacturer must notify owners once it knows about a defect, even if the parts or software are not ready. The second notice, when the fix exists, is the one that gets the car repaired — and it is the notice this study is about.

Does the wait shown mean the fix arrived then?

No. It is what the manufacturer estimated at filing, not what happened. NHTSA does not update the field afterwards, so nothing here should be read as a completed timeline.

Can I use these numbers?

Yes. The table is on this page as CSV and JSON, the underlying records are public-domain federal data, and every row links to the campaign it came from so you can check us against NHTSA.