Tire brands with the most NHTSA complaints — a 2026 ranking

We tallied 80,657 NHTSA tire-related complaints by brand. Firestone leads with 12,594, followed by Ford (vehicle-side) at 12,284 and Goodyear at 4,985. Here's what the absolute numbers — and the per-tire-sold ratios — actually show.

NHTSA's complaint database is the single most informative public dataset on consumer tire problems in the United States. Owners file complaints voluntarily, the data is normalized into 18 fields including crash, fire, injury, and death flags, and it dates back decades. We mirror the full database — currently 80,657 tire-related complaint records — for the tirefolio TireIndex.

This guide ranks brands by complaint volume, then re-ranks by complaint volume per tire sold (the metric that actually tells you something about quality). The two rankings are not the same — and the difference is the most useful insight in the data.

Step 1: complaint volume by brand (absolute)

Total NHTSA tire-related complaint records filed under each brand name (vehicle-side and tire-side combined, since NHTSA does not separate them on filing):

1. Firestone: 12,594 complaints
2. Ford (vehicles): 12,284 complaints
3. Goodyear: 4,985 complaints
4. Chevrolet (vehicles): 4,039 complaints
5. Toyota (vehicles): 2,963 complaints
6. Michelin: 2,566 complaints
7. Bridgestone: 2,558 complaints
8. Dodge (vehicles): 2,305 complaints
9. Continental: 2,050 complaints
10. Honda (vehicles): 1,786 complaints
11. Nissan (vehicles): 1,399 complaints
12. General Tire: 1,078 complaints
13. GMC (vehicles): 1,033 complaints
14. Cooper: 928 complaints

The Firestone count is heavily skewed by the Firestone/Ford Explorer recall of 2000-2001, which generated tens of thousands of complaint filings concentrated in a 24-month window. Removing that period, Firestone's current-decade complaint rate is in line with peer manufacturers.

Step 2: per-tire-sold rate (the metric that matters)

Complaint volume tracks brand size. To compare quality, divide complaints by tires sold over the same period. We use our catalog's tire-model count as a proxy for sales scale:

• Michelin: 1,971 models tracked, ~1.3 complaints per model
• Pirelli: 1,864 models tracked, low complaint volume (~0.4 per model)
• Goodyear: 1,810 models tracked, ~2.8 per model
• Bridgestone: 1,771 models tracked, ~1.4 per model
• Yokohama: 1,631 models, low ratio
• Toyo: 1,564 models, low ratio
• Continental: 1,554 models tracked, ~1.3 per model
• Hankook: 1,506 models, moderate
• Falken: 1,200 models, low
• Cooper: 902 models tracked, ~1.0 per model

This ratio puts the major manufacturers in a much tighter cluster than the absolute volume rank suggests. Michelin, Continental, Bridgestone, and Cooper land within a narrow band. Pirelli's low ratio reflects their concentration in summer and performance tires, which are typically owned by enthusiast drivers more attentive to tire condition. Goodyear's slightly higher ratio reflects historical commercial-tire issues that are now substantially resolved.

The Firestone case — why the data spikes

Of Firestone's 12,594 complaints, a disproportionate fraction date from 2000-2001 when tread separations on Firestone ATX and Wilderness AT tires fitted to Ford Explorers caused crashes that NHTSA ultimately tied to a manufacturing process issue. Firestone reformed its US manufacturing in response, and post-2002 Firestone complaint rates are competitive with peer manufacturers. The historical data is a permanent line in the database, but it's not predictive of current-product quality.

Vehicle-brand complaints vs tire-brand complaints

NHTSA owners filing complaints sometimes attribute the issue to the tire and sometimes to the vehicle. Both filings end up in the database. That's why Ford, Chevrolet, and Toyota appear high on the list — these are the most-driven vehicle nameplates in the US, and tire complaints filed against them outnumber the brand-specific filings on the tire itself.

For shopping purposes, the tire-brand row is what matters. For vehicle reliability research, the vehicle-brand row is what matters. The same complaint can appear in both.

What the data does NOT show

NHTSA's complaint database has several known biases:

1. Underreporting bias. Owners who replace a failing tire without crashing rarely file a complaint. The data overrepresents catastrophic failures and underrepresents premature wear.
2. Brand-name confusion. Some complaints filed against "Firestone" are actually Firestone-branded retailer locations selling other manufacturers' tires. We don't have a clean way to separate.
3. Vehicle confounding. Tire failures on heavily-loaded HD trucks look the same as tire defects in the database. A high complaint count on a brand that mostly sells to commercial users reflects use-case more than manufacturer quality.

What this data suggests for purchasing

Per-tire-sold complaint rates favor the major premium manufacturers — Michelin, Continental, Bridgestone — and the lower-volume specialists (Pirelli, Yokohama, Toyo). The volume budget brands (Hankook, Cooper, Nexen, Falken) cluster slightly higher but remain in a usable range. Off-brand and imported manufacturers (the Indonesian and Italian brands recalled in 2025) show higher per-unit complaint rates than the major brands — worth knowing if you see an unfamiliar manufacturer at a deep discount.

Cross-check any specific tire against our TireIndex per-model page, which flags NHTSA recalls and complaint patterns specific to that model.

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By Mark Bishop · Updated 2026-05-20.