Most Recalled Model-Years

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

Across the 148 model-years tracked at launch, NHTSA has run 1,106 separate recall campaigns. The ranking below is by campaign count — the number of distinct recall actions a model-year has been swept into — which is the best single measure of how often a vehicle has been called back. The leader, the 2019 Ram 1500, has 30 campaigns. Campaign counts are not affected-vehicle counts: one campaign can cover millions of vehicles or a few hundred, and each model-year page reproduces the official summary stating the scope.

The most common recall component across the whole range is Fuel System, Gasoline:delivery:fuel Pump with 38 campaigns, followed by Back Over Prevention: Sensing System: Camera (30). A high campaign count is not automatically a reason to avoid a vehicle — recalls are free repairs, and a model-year with many completed campaigns may be safer than one whose defects were never formally recalled — but open, uncompleted recalls are a real risk, so always run the VIN before buying.

For scale: the median tracked model-year has 5 campaigns, and 38 of the 148 model-years have been swept into ten or more. The distribution is top-heavy — the twenty vehicles above account for a disproportionate share of the 1,106 campaigns — because recall exposure concentrates in high-volume platforms whose components are shared across brands and years. A campaign filed against a shared part can pull in a dozen nameplates at once, which is why sibling models from different manufacturers often appear together in the table with near-identical campaign descriptions.