Common car faults by make & model

It depends entirely on the model. A Toyota Aqua and a Ford Ranger fail in completely different ways, and even two generations of the same nameplate share very little. That is why these pages are organised by model rather than by symptom — pick the car you are looking at and you get the faults documented for that model, with the symptoms to notice and what each typically costs to put right.

Yes. Every model page sets out its whole documented fault list in full, free to read, with no account and no card. What you pay for is different: the record of one specific car (its odometer history, whether money is owing on it, whether it is reported stolen, its ownership record and a market valuation), which no page about a model can tell you.

Each fault is documented in published sources and written against a specific model, engine and year range before it is published, then scoped so a car only ever sees faults that apply to its own generation and engine. A fault documented for a 1.4 petrol is not shown on the 2.0 diesel version of the same car.

Type its New Zealand registration into the box at the top of this page. We read the make, model and year off the register for free, without an account, and then ask you two things the register does not record — which engine and which gearbox — because those are what decide which documented faults are actually yours. You can also skip the plate entirely and pick the car by hand from the homepage. Australian plates are not looked up yet; pick the make and model instead. The used car check page explains what a full check of one car covers, and what it cannot tell you.