CarWizz data study

The used cars with the most reported fires

Name: Used cars with the most reported fires (NHTSA fire-flagged complaints)
Creator: CarWizz

Not every complaint is equal. We counted the owner complaints that NHTSA flags as involving an actual fire, across roughly 500 used-car models, and ranked the 20 with the most. In several cases the fires trace back to a single model year.

Published July 2026. Source: NHTSA fire-flagged complaints (US public record).

Key findings

The BMW 3 Series tops the list with 404 fire reports, despite only mid-pack overall complaint totals.
Five Hyundai and Kia models appear in the top 18 (Optima, Sonata, Santa Fe, Elantra, Soul), reflecting the widely documented Hyundai/Kia engine-fire recalls.
Some fires cluster in one model year: 267 of the Ford Fusion's 287 fire reports are 2013 cars, and 190 of the VW Passat's 402 are 2003 cars. A single-year spike usually points to a specific defect.
Fire reports are safety-critical, so this is a sharper signal than raw complaint volume, though it still scales somewhat with how many cars were sold.

The 20 used cars with the most fire reports

Total NHTSA fire-flagged complaints, summed across all model years. Click a car for its owner report, or the year for that year's reliability breakdown.

1BMW 3 Series404 fires

worst year 2011 (67 fires)·9,617 total complaints·75 recalls

2Volkswagen Passat402 fires

worst year 2003 (190 fires, 47% of the total)·8,599 total complaints·116 recalls

3Jeep Grand Cherokee375 fires

worst year 2011 (61 fires)·19,756 total complaints·179 recalls

4Jeep Wrangler369 fires

worst year 2021 (72 fires)·12,971 total complaints·123 recalls

5Ford Explorer324 fires

worst year 2002 (142 fires, 44% of the total)·19,662 total complaints·94 recalls

6Ford Fusion287 fires

worst year 2013 (267 fires, 93% of the total)·10,620 total complaints·35 recalls

7Kia Optima286 fires

worst year 2013 (114 fires, 40% of the total)·5,337 total complaints·42 recalls

8Chevrolet Trailblazer273 fires

worst year 2006 (127 fires, 47% of the total)·8,038 total complaints·24 recalls

9Hyundai Sonata263 fires

worst year 2011 (116 fires, 44% of the total)·9,162 total complaints·71 recalls

10Toyota Camry251 fires

worst year 1999 (49 fires)·11,333 total complaints·69 recalls

11Dodge Charger223 fires

worst year 2011 (64 fires)·5,445 total complaints·79 recalls

12Hyundai Santa Fe213 fires

worst year 2013 (54 fires)·5,697 total complaints·60 recalls

13Honda Civic201 fires

worst year 2006 (42 fires)·20,819 total complaints·208 recalls

14Ford Escape197 fires

worst year 2013 (88 fires, 45% of the total)·16,381 total complaints·81 recalls

15Ford Focus187 fires

worst year 2001 (50 fires)·26,118 total complaints·94 recalls

16Honda Accord177 fires

worst year 2007 (30 fires)·18,718 total complaints·225 recalls

17Hyundai Elantra175 fires

worst year 2013 (56 fires)·9,520 total complaints·59 recalls

18Kia Soul174 fires

worst year 2016 (68 fires)·3,482 total complaints·18 recalls

19BMW 5 Series174 fires

worst year 2004 (49 fires)·3,052 total complaints·50 recalls

20GMC Envoy169 fires

worst year 2006 (58 fires)·6,167 total complaints·25 recalls

Methodology and caveats

NHTSA tags individual owner complaints when the reported incident involved a fire. We counted those fire-flagged complaints across roughly 500 used-car models in the CarWizz database and summed them per model across every model year on record (1996 to 2025). A fire report is an owner-submitted account, not a confirmed vehicle defect, but the fire flag makes this a safety-critical subset rather than general grumbles.

The caveat:like any raw count, totals partly track how many cars were sold and how long a model has been on the road. Where this ranking is more useful than raw complaint volume is the single-year concentration: when most of a model's fire reports land on one model year, that usually reflects a specific defect (and often a recall), which the per-year links break down.

Cite this study

Free to reference with a link back to the source:

CarWizz, “The used cars with the most reported fires,” July 2026. https://car-wizz.com/studies/used-cars-most-reported-fires

Research any car's reliability Compare two cars