Complaints That Report a Fire

By the US Vehicle Safety Data Editorial Team
Last updated: October 2026

Of the 93,153 complaints in the tracked range, 1,627 report that a fire occurred. These are owner-reported outcomes recorded in NHTSA's complaint fields — a filing is not an investigation finding, and complaint volume tracks sales and age — but the ranking concentrates attention where reports cluster, which is exactly how NHTSA's own analysts use the database when deciding where to look closer.

If your vehicle shows any sign of an electrical or fuel-system problem — burning smells, smoke, melted components — treat it as urgent regardless of rankings: park outside, away from structures, and contact a dealer. And if you experience a fire or a near-miss, file it with NHTSA; these filings are the evidence base that triggers investigations and recalls.

Fire reports are 1.7% of all tracked complaints — rare per filing, but concentrated enough to rank. The rate view matters as much as the count: the leader above filed 114 fire reports within 1,386 total complaints, while some high-volume vehicles with similar totals report almost none. Complaints reporting crashes, for comparison, number 4,079 across the range — roughly one filing in every 23. Neither figure is a defect verdict; both are the raw material NHTSA's investigators sort when they decide which patterns earn a formal defect investigation, and several investigations in the modern record began exactly this way, as a visible cluster in owner filings. That pipeline — owner report, cluster, investigation, recall — is the reason filing a report matters even when nothing seems to come of it at first.