When you have a panel of over 28,000 vehicles, some of them are going to be officially lemons. As in bought back by the manufacturer when some problem could not be repaired.

The current analysis includes only successfully completed repairs, for a number of reasons. One limitation of this approach: the worst cases of all, these lemons, appear to have no problems in these results.

So I’ve considered counting any buy back as a successfully completed repair. But there are two problems with this.

First, I don’t want to give manufacturers another reason to resist buying back a lemon.

Second, in many cases the car owner has to agree to say nothing about the settlement as part of the settlement. Essentially, manufacturers are paying hush money so that news of problem cars does not get out.

This can happen with any manufacturer. Most recently I heard of it with Honda concerning a 2008 Accord. That owner can no longer discuss the issue. But he supplied some information months before the settlement. Putting the pieces together, his Accord has a problem with the variable cylinder management and/or active noise cancellation that could not be fixed. The symptom was an irritating low frequency noise. So Honda bought the car back, and had him agree to saying nothing else about the car to anyone.

Very few completed repairs have been reported for the Accord. But there does seem to be a problem with the VCM. Beyond the car that was bought back, I noticed a similar noise during my own test drive of a V6 Accord. And one other panel member is reporting that the dealer says there’s simply nothing that can be done to fix a similar problem in his car.

What I’ll do for now: place a comment on the 2008 Accord in the May results.