Public records on used cars, motorcycles, RVs and ATVs, in one place. Federal recalls, owner complaints, crash ratings and documented failure patterns, straight from government databases and written in plain English.
On the sticker inside the driver's door. Fastest way, no typing.
Send it to whoever you trust before you decide.
Take it with you, it works with no signal in a driveway.
Before you buy a used vehicle you're supposed to check the recalls, read what other owners reported, look up the crash ratings, find out what breaks on that engine, and understand what the title actually says. That means five different websites, and most people check none of them.
Every number on this site comes from a public source you can go verify yourself. We don't have secret data, we're not guessing, and we're not selling you a report. The federal government publishes all of it. We just put it in one place and wrote it in plain English.
It started as a private cheat sheet, one person tired of looking up the same things over and over before going to see a car. It turned out to be worth more as a public one. There's no signup, no paywall and no dealer money, because the moment a dealer pays for placement the verdicts stop being worth reading.
When someone clears codes or disconnects the battery, the computer resets every emissions monitor to Incomplete or Not Ready. Those only return to Ready after specific drive cycles, cold starts and sustained highway driving, which takes days of normal use.
OBD2 monitors emissions-related systems. It will tell you nothing about the transmission's mechanical condition, suspension, rust, frame damage, or whether the timing chain is stretched but not yet throwing a code. A perfect scan and a bad car are entirely compatible.
We are not affiliated with any scanner or app maker and we do not take money from them. Any ELM327 adapter and any app that reads pending and permanent codes will do the job.
Two rules that never change: the seller's name on the title must match their photo ID, and the title must be physically present at the sale. "I'll mail it later" is how people lose thousands.
Where the information comes from: NHTSA vPIC (vehicle decoding) · NHTSA Recalls · NHTSA Owner Complaints · NHTSA Crash-Test Safety Ratings · publicly reported model reliability patterns. Public safety data exists because of decades of consumer-protection law. We just made it readable.
Accuracy is the only thing this site has. If a year range is off, a cost band looks wrong, a statute has changed, or a verdict does not match what you found on the actual car, we want to know and we will change it.
Questions, comments, corrections or feedback:
usedcarinformer@gmail.com
We read everything. We cannot give advice about your specific car or your specific deal, and nothing we write back is legal advice or a substitute for a pre-purchase inspection.
The site is free and it costs nothing to run, so there is no subscription and there never will be a paywall. If it saved you from a bad car and you want to throw something in the hat, that will be an option here soon.
Donations, if and when they exist, will never buy influence over a verdict. No manufacturer, dealer, insurer, warranty company or additive maker can pay to soften what this site says about a vehicle. That is the whole point of it.
