Can an inanimate object "claim" to do something? Like a car that "claims" 45 mpg?

Excited to find this website!

Is it incorrect to say that a "dietary supplement claims to treat" a condition, or that a car "claims to get 40 mpg"?

I thought that as these are inanimate objects, you would need to say "a supplement with claims to treat..." or a "the manufacturer claims the car gets 45 mpg..." but I hear this phrase frequently, where an object "claims" something. Which is correct?

Thanks!

The usual subject of 'claim' would indeed reference an agent. However, it is not a vast step from

Dietitians claim that co-enzyme 534, found in aardvark milk, makes waists hairier.

to

This article / magazine claims that co-enzyme 534, found in aardvark milk, makes waists hairier.

(short for the authors / editors of this article / magazine claim that co-enzyme 534, found in aardvark milk, makes waists hairier.)

and thence to

'Cozy 534 claims that its aardvark milk extracts make waists hairier'.

It's a fairly common type of idiom, a type of personification.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s third definition of the verb claim is:

Of things: To call for, demand, or require; to be entitled to, deserve, have a right to.

The earliest citation is this from Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’:

Octauia . . . whose beauty claimes

No worse a husband then the best of men.

Other citations in which the subject of claim is an object, include one from Milton and one from Robert Browning.

This is a middle voice construction. Read "...dietary supplement claims to treat..." as "...dietary supplement is claimed to treat...". Compare the two following sentences, the first containing a middle voice construction and the second passive voice:

The recliner breaks down into a loveseat and ottoman to meet your family's needs.
The recliner is/can be broken down into a loveseat and ottoman to meet your family's needs

I include some other examples from the Corpus of Historical English in case they may be of interest.

" In a country with fifty-nine million single people and a magazine like Bride's that claims to reach just over three million, it stands to reason that there's got to be a big lesbian audience out there somewhere, " Maxi answered, trying for a tone of sweet reasonableness. (c.1980)

This view of Greece, though it can not claim to be considered a regular description, leads us to several remarks, which may perhaps throw some light on the history of the nation. (c.1820)

Besides, the translation does not claim to be anonymous. (1829)

[I]t becomes more and more apparent that the Eastern world can not claim to be the only cradle of human culture.

EYEDROPS that claim to get the red out may wind up making eyes even redder(1997)