Terms
of use

Using this site

These terms cover your use of enginecreep.com, including the engine reports, comparisons, lists and articles. By using the site you accept them; if you don’t, please don’t use it. The site is free and needs no account, and nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

A score is not an inspection. It tells you how an engine has held up across many owners, not what state the one in front of you is in. Poor maintenance can ruin even the most reliable engine, and good maintenance can keep a poorly rated one running well. No score can tell you which one you are looking at, so always have a qualified mechanic inspect the specific car before you buy it.

What EngineCreep is

EngineCreep publishes reliability scores, known faults, failure mileages and estimated repair costs for car engines, compiled from public owner reports and official records. It is for general information and research only.

EngineCreep is independent. It is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by any vehicle manufacturer, parts supplier, NHTSA or DVSA.

Not mechanical advice

• Not professional advice. Scores, verdicts, fault descriptions, checklists and cost estimates are general information, not mechanical, engineering, legal or financial advice.
• Your car is not the average. A score describes an engine across many owners. A well-kept example of a poorly rated engine can be fine, and a well-rated one can still fail.
• Costs are estimates.Real repair bills vary with country, labour rates, parts prices and availability, exchange rates, and the car’s condition and history.
• Check before you fix. Have a qualified mechanic look at a fault before you diagnose or repair it yourself.

Where the data comes from

Reports are built from public owner discussions on marque forums, the NHTSA complaint database and DVSA MOT records, weighed as described in our methodology. Those sources can be incomplete, out of date or wrong, and so can our reading of them. We work to keep reports accurate, but we make no promise that any of it is accurate, complete or current.

Scores are not fixed. They change as new reports come in and as the methodology is refined, so a score you saw last month may be different today. If you spot a mistake, use “Something wrong here?” at the foot of the engine report.

DVSA MOT data contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Fair use of the site

You are welcome to read, share and link to any page, and to quote a short excerpt or a single score with a link back to the page it came from. Without our written permission, you may not:

• scrape, bulk-download or systematically copy reports, scores or cost data, or republish them as a dataset, a product or a competing site;
• get around Cloudflare’s security checks or the forms’ spam limits, or send traffic meant to slow down or disrupt the site;
• use the contact or report forms to send spam, abuse or anything unlawful.

Search engines and other crawlers that follow our robots.txt and crawl at a reasonable pace are welcome.

What you send us

When you send a correction or a message through the site, you confirm it is accurate as far as you know and yours to share, and we may use it to correct or improve reports. If you tick “You can quote me anonymously”, you allow us to publish your message, or part of it, on the relevant engine page without your name. We may shorten it, but we won’t change its meaning. How we handle your details is set out in our privacy policy.

Intellectual property

The site’s original writing, scores, grading system, compiled data, design and branding belong to EngineCreep and are protected by copyright and other laws.

Manufacturer names, model names and engine codes belong to their owners and are used only to identify the vehicles being discussed. The owner posts behind each report belong to their authors; reports show our own summaries of them, not the posts themselves. If you believe something on the site infringes your rights, email contact@enginecreep.com with the page it is on.

Ads and external links

Some pages carry advertisements served by Google AdSense, and reports and articles link to forums, official databases and other sites. We don’t control, endorse or guarantee anything advertised or linked, and any dealings you have with those businesses or sites are between you and them. The cookies ads use are covered in our privacy policy.

Limitation of liability

The site is provided free, as it is and as available. We may change, pause or remove any part of it at any time, and we don’t promise it will always be online or free of errors.

As far as the law allows, EngineCreep and the people who run it are not liable for any loss or damage arising from:

• using the site, or not being able to use it;
• buying, selling, repairing or not repairing a vehicle on the strength of a score, fault description or cost estimate published here;
• mechanical failure, injury or damage from driving or working on a vehicle.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Changes and contact

We may update these terms. When we do, the date at the top of the page changes, and using the site after that means you accept the updated version. Questions about them go to contact@enginecreep.com or through the contact form.