Cars are, without a doubt, the most complicated products made. And the cost is second only to buying a house. Unless you own a boat, but that’s another story. That’s why it is so frustrating when your expensive Belchmobile 3000 is part of a recall. Sometimes it can be minor, while other times it’s over serious safety concerns. For different reasons, Ford Motor Company leads all other automakers in recalled cars by a long shot.

How many recalled cars did Ford have in 2022?

Ford has become notorious for its botched new vehicle introductions over the past several years. Some of these recalls have to do with all-new cars maybe not quite ready for primetime. Regardless, Ford had more than twice the number of recalls as the company in second place. 

What’s really astounding is that U.S. Department of Transportation figures show almost 20% of all the vehicles Ford produced in 2022 ended up being recalled. It issued 67 recalls and also recalled the most at 8.63 million. It’s more than twice the number of cars recalled by the next company on the list, which is Tesla.

Which company was second on the recalled cars list?

Yes, in spite of its many achievements over the past year, Tesla had the second-most cars recalled. Over 3.75 million vehicles covered 20 recall campaigns. So the number of cars put it in second place, but the number of recalls was far lower than Ford’s. Actually, the number of recalls was eight companies down the list. 

The automaker with the next highest amount of recalls under Ford was Volkswagen. It issued 45 recalls involving over one million cars. In fact, no manufacturer in the top ten most recalled had under one million cars recalled. Mercedes-Benz just squeaked in under one million with 970,000 cars, but that’s close enough to call it one million.

The list of the top ten most recalled cars in 2022

Here’s the full recall list for your perusal:

• Ford: 67 recalls of 8,636,265 vehicles
• Volkswagen Group: 45 recalls of 1,040,885 vehicles
• FCA/Stellantis: 38 recalls of 3,041,431 vehicles
• Mercedes-Benz: 33 recalls of 969,993 vehicles
• General Motors: 32 recalls of 3,371,302 vehicles
• Kia: 24 recalls of 1,458,962 vehicles
• Hyundai: 22 recalls of 1,452,101 vehicles
• Tesla: 20 recalls of 3,769,581 vehicles
• BMW: 19 recalls of 1,000,455 vehicles
• Nissan: 15 recalls of 1,568,385 vehicles

While low-volume automakers like Bugatti and Maserati had the lowest amount of recalls, of the mass car manufacturers only Mazda had the lowest amount of car recalls. As for Bugatti’s recall, it was just that, a single vehicle was recalled in all of 2022. 

As a side note, Ferrari recalled 23,555 cars in 2022. On average, it only manufactures around 10,000 cars each year. That many cars represent over two years of the total production of Ferraris, which is an incredibly large figure unto itself. The recall was over brake failures covering 17 years of production and 19 models.