Occasionally a participant in the Car Reliability Survey tells me, “I no longer have the car, but I can’t tell you more than that.” They don’t have to tell me more. I know what this means. The manufacturer (usually Honda, but sometimes some others) has bought the car back because some problem with it could not be fixed despite three or more attempts, meeting the conditions of the state’s lemon law, and the buy-back agreement included a confidentiality clause. To get the car taken off their hands, the owners had to agree not to talk about it. What do you think about this?

On the one hand, the manufacturer gets to protect its reputation–you’ll hardly ever hear of its cars qualifying as lemons and getting bought back. And the car owner no longer has to deal with a troublesome car. Both parties benefit.

On the other hand, the rest of the public might form a false impression about how reliable the manufacturer’s cars really are. Information that could benefit others is kept under wraps. But does the general public have any legitimate interest in the case, or is it entirely between the manufacturer and the car owner?

Dislaimer: I have a personal interest in this, because confidentiality clauses could potentially reduce the accuracy of TrueDelta’s reliability information. But as long as a problem is reported prior to the settlement and we later learn that the car is gone, then the clauses have no impact on our stats.