I think you're downplaying the number of cars that actually do burst into flames. A car telling me it can't run seems quite undramatic.

If you are late to work because your car won't start, say a bad starter or a dead fuel pump, would you really tell your boss that your car had a "catastrophic" failure?

So what would constitute a normal failure? Because I wouldn't consider it a failure at all unless I couldn't drive.

That was what I was imagining when reading the headline. The battery had spontaneously combusted or something like that.

I think catastrophic to me would involve some sort of destruction of the car. Like it exploding or something.