Top 5 cities most & least impacted by recalls

RepairPal.com released analysis on Tuesday that blends together the site’s data with information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to find the cities most impacted by vehicle recalls.

The site organized user data relating to owner inquiries website user activity by ZIP code seeking repair information during the past five years along with recall data collected from NHTSA to compare against the top researched vehicles in each specified metropolitan area.

The area most impacted by recalls turned out to be Pittsburgh, with data suggesting 60.85 percent of vehicle researchers in the Steel City area seeing a recall.

“Pittsburgh's affinity for Chevys may be partially to blame for their high recall score,” site officials said. “In particular, two of the vehicles RepairPal users in this city researched most frequently include the 2008 Chevrolet Cobalt and the 2006 Chevrolet Aveo — both of which were hit with relatively large recalls in the past five years.”

Pittsburgh was followed by the New York City metropolitan area with a rate of 60.13 percent. In New York, RepairPal users more frequently research commonly recalled vehicles like the Honda Accord and CR-V, as well as the Toyota Corolla and Camry.

"In addition, the BMW 325i seems to have a surprising following in this region. The fact that it was part of a recall twice — in 2013 and in 2016 — didn’t help New York's score here,” site officials said.

The third metro area most affected by recalls was Edison, N.J., with 59.90 percent, followed by Newark, N.J., with 59.12 percent and Boston with 59.06 percent.

Some of our lowest recall scores came from out West, as RepairPal.com found that Seattle residents saw the lowest recall rates at 42.62 percent, followed by Portland, Ore., at 42.68 percent and Las Vegas at 46.27 percent.

Some other notably low recall rates were found in the Virginia area, with Richmond and Virginia Beach showing scores of 46.47 percent and 46.70 percent, respectively.

To view more of the report along with the methodology of compiling the data used, go to this website.