Worst vehicle ever? 2002 Explorer according to CarComplaints.com

[KC10Chief]

Has anybody ever checked out www.carcomplaints.com? It's a cool site where people can record their problems with their cars. Any car from any year. The site breaks it all down into statistics. You can select any vehicle from any year and see what the most common problem with it is. The worst vehicle of all, is the 2002 Ford Explorer. It has almost 3,000 complaints. The 2003 and 2004 Explorers are in the top 5 as well. Transmission stuff mostly. Here's the link to the top 20 worst vehicles.
http://www.carcomplaints.com/worst_vehicles/

After owning a 2002 Explorer, I can vouch for this. That was the most problematic vehicle I ever owned and I was sure glad to see it go. My 1991 Explorer was a much better vehicle.

 

[matt0248]

02-06 explorers are all in the top 20.!!!

 

[gtyates]

I guess I am "lucky" but my '04 Exp. and '05 Sport Trac are NOT giving me any issues!! I will say I maintenance mine like crazy, even doing transmission service at 50k instead of book recommended 100k.

 

[dbhender]

As the explorer has been and still is one of the most popular SUV's on the market and has out sold many other SUV's hand over fist, there are alot of em out there. So it would make sense that there would be alot of complaints about them. Not saying they arent problematic, just very many of them out there so you may see it as more of a problem than others. They ALL have issues....evey make every model.

 

[jrford]

Biggest item seem to be the rear cracked panel, other than looks, inconvenience of fixing, its a non-issue that won't leave you stranded. The trans on the other hand. . . .

they made over a million between 02-05. So they have 3,000 complaints ('04) and made 339,333, so roughly that's .008% failure for '04, that doesn't seem bad. Although you should compare it to others to get a better idea. What would be more useful is if you compare it to the number of complaints per 100,000 vehicles manufactured.

 

[Falconkeeper]

I don't see the Yugo. Maybe there was not enough made to get into the top 20.

 

[KC10Chief]

Biggest item seem to be the rear cracked panel, other than looks, inconvenience of fixing, its a non-issue that won't leave you stranded. The trans on the other hand. . . .

So they have 3,000 complaints but they made over a million between 02-05, so roughly that's .003% failure, that doesn't seem bad. Although you should compare it to others to get a better idea. What would be more useful is if you compare it to the number of complaints per 100,000 vehicles manufactured.

You guys have a point on the number of Explorers on the road. However, your statistics are also screwy. Not everybody that has had a problem with their 02 Explorer went to that website and complained about it. I had an 02 Explorer and while I never had any serious issues with it other than some brake stuff, I still felt like something was about to go wrong with the tranny. It shifted hard. Reading horror stories on THIS site is what convinced me to sell it. Glad I did too.

 

[swetrid]

2002 is the worst year for the explorer, I wouldnt buy one unless you know history.