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: 2) by qzm on Tuesday July 14 2020, @06:42AM
E66, Put 150k miles on it.
In that time it had an alternator diode pack go bad (french part, funny enough). BMW wanted close to $1500 for the parts/labour to change the alternator - the diode pack cost $30 and took perhaps an hour to change myself.
The PCV breather gummed up - engine started EATING oil, smoking like a monster (suddenly), cleaned the PCV breather, back to perfect, no cost.
Currently the windscreen washer doesnt squirt water - must go find out why.
BMW tells you not to change the ATF fluid - which is ok if you want a new transmission every 100k . change the fluid every 60k and it is a rock.
Moral of the story? if you can spin a wrench and look after a car, they are not bad - if you drive in to the stealer for everything - horrific.
Have been considering an F01 (also 730ld).. they seem more plastic and the aluminum door panels are damn hard to repair.. undecided.