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The Most and Least Expensive Cars to Maintain
The most expensive thing most Americans own, after their house, is their car. On average, Americans spend 5% of their income on purchasing a car. Another 5% goes towards ongoing maintenance and insurance costs.
But not every car costs the same to keep it running. And different cars have varying risks of leaving their drivers suddenly immobilized.
At YourMechanic, we have a massive dataset of the make and model of the cars we have serviced and the type of maintenance done. We decided to use our data to understand which cars break down the most and have the highest maintenance costs. We also looked into which types of maintenance are most common to certain cars.
Which Car Brands Cost the Most to Maintain?
Based on estimates of total car maintenance over 10 years
Rank Car-Brand Cost 1 BMW $17,800 2 Mercedes-Benz $12,900 3 Cadillac $12,500 4 Volvo $12,500 5 Audi $12,400 6 Saturn $12,400 7 Mercury $12,000 8 Pontiac $11,800 9 Chrysler $10,600 10 Dodge $10,600 11 Acura $9,800 12 Infiniti $9,300 13 Ford $9,100 14 Kia $8,800 15 Land Rover $8,800 16 Chevrolet $8,800 17 Buick $8,600 18 Jeep $8,300 19 Subaru $8,200 20 Hyundai $8,200 21 GMC $7,800 22 Volkswagen $7,800 23 Nissan $7,600 24 Mazda $7,500 25 Mini $7,500 26 Mitsubishi $7,400 27 Honda $7,200 28 Lexus $7,000 29 Scion $6,400 30 Toyota $5,500
What has been your experience in this regard ?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 13 2020, @03:56PM (1 child)
I agree that Chrysler quality has long been mediocre. Around 2000, the Dodge Neon won the Motor Trend car of the year award, and scarcely 2 years later, Neons were piling up in junkyards because the head gaskets were giving out. That can quickly ruin an engine. A bad head gasket can leak antifreeze and oil. Lose all the oil, and the engine won't last even 1 mile. Can go a few tens of miles with a slow oil leak, but you're flirting with disaster. The Neons became infamous for that problem.
If that was the only issue, it wouldn't be so bad, but Chryslers in general just plain have more and worse problems. My parents had a 1967 Chrysler New Yorker, with a monster 7L engine (440 cu. in., actually). Eventually, it became clear that Chrysler had not designed the front robustly enough to support the weight of that engine. After a bit of rusting from winter driving, the supports and front suspension components gradually bent and collapsed. That's just plain cheap and shoddy engineering. No excuse for that. All the American manufacturers did some of that, but Chrysler always pushed the cheapening more than the rest, often going too far. Additionally, that New Yorker was a terrible gas guzzler, getting a whopping 13 miles per gallon, and that good only if you took it easy. Nevertheless, it was better than their previous Chrysler, a 1963 model.
All the American manufacturers cheaped out to the max on compact cars. Had an '88 Ford Escort for a while, and it was terrible. Clutch would last only 50k miles, because they just plain made the clutch plate too small. Same story with the ball joints, too small, and worn out after 50k to 70k miles. Toyota's ball joints were nearly twice the size. Lot of other components were marginal and short-lived. Even the headlight switch failed. It also had crappy electronics for the ignition system, and the engine never idled smoothy. Making small cars cheap and shoddy was somewhat deliberate, to drive consumers to the bigger, and more profitable, models. If you wanted a good quality small car, had to be Japanese.
But Ford did splurge a little on useless and counterproductive bling. That lousy '88 Escort had a vanity mirror with lights in the sun visor. Lights would come on when the mirror was exposed. Problem was, the mirror was covered with a flap hinged at the bottom, and the flap was prone to coming loose when sunlight had heated the visor enough to soften the adhesive that held the velcro. One time as I was driving, it fell open, blocking my view through the windshield. Another time when parked, it did that trick and when we came back to the car hours later we found that the vanity lights had drained the battery. After that one, we removed those light bulbs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2020, @09:06PM
I like Hondas - bad head gasket? No problem at all to pull the block and rebuild it, even if it is OHC (and Honda manuals are /good/!). Don't even need a block-puller for that little 4 banger in the Civic.