The percentages look bullshit to me. They explain this as number of recalls in a given year divided by new registrations, which I’m assuming are registrations of the given make. However, those numbers are not related.

Firstly, newly registered cars most likely will be different models than those affected by recalls. The ratio mixes two different sets of data. At least from what I’ve seen new models are rarely subject to recalls, and the article definitely does not give any evidence to substantiate it’s approach.

Secondly, we get no context of the new registration trends. A brand losing market share will be appearing worse in the statistics than a brand gaining. It looks pretty clear to me why Volvo and Mitsubishi have such high percentages, with this approach.

A more valid statistic but much harder to assess accurately would be the total number of cars a given brand has on the market at the time of the recall.

A possible alternative approach could be to divide the number of recalls for a specific model year by the total number of units produced in a given model year and average them out across whole manufacturer gamut.

Either way the statistics the article presented do not look very trustworthy and seem to favour new and rising brands.