1997 CHEVROLET MALIBU — Complaint #461233
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about VISIBILITY:REAR WINDOW WIPER/WASHER:LINKAGES filed March 17, 2004
NHTSA complaint #461233 (ODI reference 10062439) concerns a 1997 CHEVROLET MALIBU and was filed on March 17, 2004. The owner reports the failure occurred on March 17, 2004. The vehicle had 109,482 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Florida based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as visibility:rear window wiper/washer:linkages, 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 visibility:rear window wiper/washer:linkages 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 1997 CHEVROLET MALIBU shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
WHILE TRAVELING ON A BUSY INTERSTATE IN VERY HEAVY RAINS AND RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC, I HEARD A LOUD NOISE AND THEN MY WIPERS WERE STOPPED & CRISS-CROSSED IN FRONT OF ME. I FELT EXTREMELY LUCKY TO GET OFF THE HIGHWAY, WITHOUT CAUSING A WRECK. LATER, I FOUND OUT THAT THERE WAS A KNOW DEFECT ON THE WIPER PIVOTS FOR MY MODEL CAR. BUT REGARDLESS, THE RECALL WASN'T ANY GOOD FOR MY STATE. I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE LOGIC BEHIND THIS... IF A PART IS DEFECTIVE- IT IS DEFECTIVE. THE RECALL WAS ONLY EFFECTIVE FOR CERTAIN 'SALT-BELT' STATES, OF WHICH MY STATE ISN'T INCLUDED. I DID HOWEVER LIVE IN ONE OF THESE SALT-BELT STATES FOR SEVERAL YEARS (WITH THIS CAR). BUT WHETHER YOUR CAR IS REGISTERED IN ONE OF THOSE STATES OR NOT YOU COULD HAVE A LOT OF USE OF THE WIPERS. BETWEEN HURRICANE SEASON AND THE RAINY SEASON IN FLORIDA, WIPERS GET A WHOLE LOT OF USE DOWN HERE TOO. *NM
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 461233 |
| ODI Number | 10062439 |
| Date Filed | March 17, 2004 |
| Failure Date | March 17, 2004 |
| VIN | 1G1ND52T3VY |
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.