The most-recalled automobiles of 2006

"You really don't need to do a safety recall" in a case like this, he said.

We asked why NHTSA would push for such a recall. "NHTSA measures its success in large part by the number of recalls it generates,” McDonald says. “There was a time in the '70s when it focused on forward-looking rule-making and setting safety standards. Over time, NHTSA has come to focus on recalls as one measure of how they are doing their job."

What’s more, “even if you have a good-faith disagreement on what's a safety defect or whether it's in a certain class of vehicles, if you're going to litigate the issue, whether you'll win in the court of public opinion is very dubious."

And more cars are recalled than sold because recalls often span multiple model years, increasing the pool of potentially affected vehicles.

NHTSA declined to comment on McDonald's remarks to Forbes.com.

While our data on the most-recalled 2006-model cars comes from NHTSA's list of safety recalls, Honda has taken issue with what exactly constitutes a safety recall.

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The carmaker's 2006-model Accords and Civics participated in a July 2006 recall that potentially affected 1.2 million 2006- and 2007-model Hondas. The recall sounded pretty minor: The owner's manuals of certain cars and motorcycles had incorrect contact information for NHTSA's Vehicle Safety Hotline. Honda responded by sending postcards with the correct information to dealers and owners.

"By definition, recalls are issued to address something that poses a risk to passenger safety, so this was not a recall," wrote Honda spokesman Chris Naughton in a recent e-mail message.

But NHTSA lists the owner's-manual case in its safety-recall database, and we can see how not being able to call the right NHTSA number to report safety defects could be a problem, so we counted this recall in determining the most-recalled 2006-model cars.

Naughton went on to say that Honda was among companies with the fewest recalls in model-year 2006, and that some recalls span different model years (such as the owner's-manual recall, which affected 2006- and 2007-model cars).

In terms of other comments we received in researching this story, Land Rover e-mailed us the following statement in response to our inclusion of the company's LR3 and Range Rover Sport SUVs in this story: "For the most part, Land Rover recalls have involved a small number of vehicles. We identified the issues and diligently worked to correct them. Land Rover recognizes the need for sustainable high quality, and we are committed to achieving the high levels of quality our customers expect from us."

A DaimlerChrysler spokesman also touched on the volume of certain recalls in response to our inclusion of two Dodges and a Jeep in this story. The spokesman wrote in a recent e-mail, "Several of the recalls involved small numbers of vehicles."

By publication time General Motors had not responded to requests for comment.

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