2004 CHEVROLET MALIBU — Complaint #1765014
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about EXTERIOR LIGHTING:HEADLIGHTS:CONCEALMENT DEVICES filed August 25, 2021
NHTSA complaint #1765014 (ODI reference 11430503) concerns a 2004 CHEVROLET MALIBU and was filed on August 25, 2021. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 2, 2019. The report was geocoded to New York based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as exterior lighting:headlights:concealment devices, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same CHEVROLET MALIBU cohort independently describe similar exterior lighting:headlights:concealment devices failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2004 CHEVROLET MALIBU shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2004 Chevrolet Malibu. The contact stated while the vehicle was parked and the engine running the contact noticed that their front driver and passenger headlight were very low in both low beam and high beam and that the light eventually burned out. The contact inspected the vehicle and saw that the light bulb sockets for both the front driver side and passenger had melted. The contact stated the cause of the failure is the wiring behind the headlight assembly that is causing the headlight socket to melt. The contact replaced the headlight bulb sockets themselves with aftermarket parts to repair the failure, however, the failure persisted and reoccurred. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was unknown.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1765014 |
| ODI Number | 11430503 |
| Date Filed | August 25, 2021 |
| Failure Date | January 2, 2019 |
| VIN | 1G1ZS52F44F |
Similar EXTERIOR LIGHTING:HEADLIGHTS:CONCEALMENT DEVICES Complaints for 2004 CHEVROLET MALIBU
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.