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 SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday July 14 2020, @03:54PM (1 child)
Our maintenance costs on our 2016 Nissan Leaf (electric) and 2009 Toyota Yaris (gas) have been, precisely, $0 since last October. While we haven't put big miles on the Yaris, we've put over 10K miles on the Leaf.
The fact that there are no electrics on the list means that the list sucks.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 14 2020, @05:40PM
Ugh you're missing the point completely.
Around here batteries die in about 4 years and cost maybe $80? Figure $20/year? So figure your Yaris starter battery has lost maybe a year of its life since October so you need to budget $20 for the starter battery alone?
Yeah YOU personally didn't spend $80 on a new four year battery within the last year, but accumulate 1000 Yaris owners and the group likely spent about $20000 total on batteries in the last year, which averages out to $20/yr.
I'm sure very few individual Toyota owners spent exactly $5500 last decade but on average Toyota owners spend half what Dodge owners spend on repairs, sure.