A plain reference for information carmakers already have to publish.
OpenCarGuide is an independent site that makes federal vehicle data searchable by people who are not researchers.
Why this site exists
Nearly everything you need to evaluate a used car is already public. NHTSA publishes manufacturers' VIN decoding data, safety recall campaigns going back to 1966, and crash-test results from its New Car Assessment Program. All of it is free, and all of it is in the public domain.
It is also spread across several interfaces built for people who already know what they are looking for. A buyer standing in a driveway with a phone and a VIN should not have to learn three government portals to see which recall campaigns cover that model, and then confirm with a VIN check at nhtsa.gov whether any are still open.
So we put the lookups on one page, in language that does not assume a background in vehicle regulation, and we keep the raw values visible rather than summarizing them into a score.
How the content is made
Tool results come from NHTSA: the page sends your query to NHTSA's public databases and shows what comes back, with names and dates reformatted for reading. Fields the manufacturer didn't report are left out rather than guessed.
We use AI assistance in research and drafting. Every factual statement must trace to a source we cite, and we correct errors when they're reported. As the site grows, a person will review a sample of every new release. See our editorial policy.
Qualification statement
OpenCarGuide is a research and reference publication. We are not mechanics, dealers, manufacturers or a government agency, and nothing here is professional mechanical, legal or purchasing advice. Our competence is in sourcing: knowing which federal dataset answers a question, what it covers, and where it stops.
For anything safety-critical, confirm with a franchised dealer, a qualified technician, or NHTSA directly by VIN. Each of our tool pages repeats this, because it matters more than the convenience we offer.