Know the carbefore you sign
Recalls, defect investigations, owner complaints matched to your exact build, crash tests and running costs — resolved into one call, in about a second. Free, and specific about what it could not check.
FreeNo accountNo cardNo limit
- 1HG
- World manufacturer identifier — Honda. A leading 1 places the build in North America.
- CM8263
- Descriptor: model, body and engine coding. Position 9 closes it — the check digit, computed from the other sixteen.
- 3A004352
- Identifier: model year 2003, assembly plant A, unit 004352.
Every figure comes off our own tables
These are the row counts this instance actually loaded, read from the database when you asked for the page. They are not a marketing number: if a load fails, the figure here falls with it.
Bulk federal downloads, refreshed on a schedule, served out of Postgres we run ourselves. That is the entire reason the report is free: the recall, investigation, complaint and economy tables cost us nothing to query. The VIN decode and the crash-test ratings are still live calls to NHTSA; moving them here is the next thing on that list.
Free is not a trial
No account, no card, no expiry, no per-report limit, nothing to install. Every source behind the free report is a bulk federal dataset we host, so a lookup is a database query and the marginal cost is zero. Nothing is on sale yet; when the paid layer opens it will be the commercial records we do not hold today, and every price, renewal term and allowance is already published before anyone is asked for a card.
More than most paid reports
A verdict, not a document
One word — clear, caution or walk — and then the reasons it rests on, ranked, each with a sentence you can say out loud on the lot.
Every safety recall
With the full remedy text and NHTSA’s “park it” and “park outside” advisories: the ones that mean stop driving the car today.
Every defect investigation since 1972
Preliminary evaluations, engineering analyses, recall queries — open and closed. NHTSA exposes no API for them, which is the likeliest reason we have not found another consumer report that carries them.
Complaints matched to your exact build
Not “2003 Honda Accord”. This engine, this trim, this assembly plant, matched on the same configuration key the federal decoder emits.
Where in a vehicle’s life each system fails
Owners file a mileage with their complaint. We read it back as a distribution — lower quartile, median, upper quartile — and tell you the sample size behind it.
Crash tests for the tested configuration
Star ratings matched on doors and restraint fitment, not on the model name, with the match basis printed beside them.
Fuel economy and running cost
EPA figures matched to cylinders, displacement and transmission — and where the VIN cannot pick one variant, the range rather than a guess.
The coverage ledger
Which of the six sources answered, what each returned, how this vehicle was matched to it, and what was never looked at.
We have not found a consumer vehicle report that publishes the defect investigations or the failure-mileage distribution. The datasets behind this carry more than the report renders today — the raw crash-test biomechanics among them. Those will be listed here when they are on screen, and not before.
What we hold, and what we do not
A free report that quietly implied a clean history would be worse than no report at all. So both halves are stated, in the product and here.
- Federal VIN decodefederal API
NHTSA’s vPIC decoder, called live. The VIN is sent to it on every lookup.
- NHTSA safety recallsself-hosted
Campaigns, remedy text, build-date windows, park-it advisories.
- NHTSA defect investigationsself-hosted
Every ODI action since 1972, open and closed.
- NHTSA owner complaintsself-hosted
With mileage at failure, injuries, deaths and fire flags.
- NHTSA crash testsfederal API
Star ratings for the configuration that was actually tested. Called live, then cached here.
- EPA fuel economyself-hosted
Consumption, CO₂, electric range and annual fuel cost.
- Title brandsnot held
Salvage, junk, flood, fire, lemon, total loss. These come from NMVTIS and its resellers.
- Accident and damage recordsnot held
We hold no collision, insurance or body-shop records, so no report of ours says a vehicle has not crashed.
- Odometer history and rollbacknot held
We cannot compare readings over time, so we cannot tell you whether the dash is consistent with the record.
- Auction listings, sale prices and photographsnot held
Commercial and copyrighted. When we carry them they will be served from the supplier’s own CDN, unmodified.
- Whether the asking price is fairnot held
We hold no market valuations. The dollar figures in a report are repair and running costs, never a valuation.
- Whether a recall was actually done on this VINnot held
NHTSA’s per-VIN remedy lookup is reCAPTCHA-gated and publishes nothing queryable. A franchised dealer can print it in a minute; we cannot derive it, and we never imply we have.
Prices read on 29 July 2026 and certain to have moved since — check them yourself before relying on them. We are not claiming the free report replaces a paid one: it holds no title history and no accident records, and it says so on every page it appears on. We are claiming that the federal half — which those reports also charge for, and which carries work we have not found any of them selling — costs nothing here. The paid layer, when it opens, is priced in full on the pricing page.
Seventeen characters to one word
- One
Acquire
Point the camera at the barcode on the door jamb, or paste the seventeen characters here. Normalisation, the check digit and the repair search all run on the device, so capture works in a steel-framed showroom with no signal and costs nothing.
- Two
Decode
The characters resolve positionally, because that is how a VIN is built. Position 9 is computed from the other sixteen — so when it disagrees we can tell you which character to look at instead of refusing the whole thing.
- Three
Call it
Six federal sources are read, weighted by how much they bear on a decision, and resolved into one word. Below it: the ranked reasons, the dollar exposure of each, and a list of everything we did not check.
Nothing disqualifying, and enough of the record answered to be entitled to say so. Both gates have to hold: every decision-bearing source resolved, and coverage at or above 75%. Fail either and the call degrades — and says that it degraded because of a gap in what we checked, not a finding against the car.
Something real and usually negotiable: a recall campaign, an open investigation, a complaint theme on this exact configuration, or a fuel-cost gap worth more than $200 a year. Each one carries what it is likely to cost if it needs doing, and the arithmetic behind that figure.
Three things reach this, and only three: a NHTSA “park it” advisory, a disqualifying title brand, or a proven odometer rollback. No volume of recalls or complaints gets here — complaints describe a population of vehicles, not the one in front of you.
Every report shows its own working
“We found nothing” and “we could not look” are different facts, and you are told which one applies. Every report ends with what was checked, what each source returned, how this vehicle was matched to it, and what was never looked at. Nothing is generated over a gap.
The “not checked” lines in that panel appear on every report we produce, including the ones that come back looking spotless.
- VIN decodeok
NHTSA’s decoder, called live for this VIN.
- Safety recalls11 campaigns
- Defect investigations5 · 2 open
- Owner complaints255 found
Matched on the exact configuration this VIN decodes to, not on the model name.
- Crash tests (NCAP)matched
Two-door with side airbags.
- Fuel economy (EPA)matched
On the decoded powertrain.
- Title brandsnot checked
Commercial source. This report therefore makes no statement whatsoever about the title.
- Accident and damage recordsnot checked
- Odometer historynot checked
- Whether the recall work was donenot derivable
NHTSA publishes no per-VIN remedy status anyone can query.
Figures as recorded when this example was taken from the live report; open the VIN above for the current ones. Recall campaigns are those that apply to this vehicle — we cannot see whether the work was carried out on this particular one, and we never say otherwise.
Check it before you sign, not after
It takes about a second, it costs nothing, and you do not have to tell us who you are.