Owning a car is a continuous expense. For many of us, a new car means monthly payments for years. Beyond that, cars cost money to repair and maintain.
Most Americans now keep a car much longer than its warranty protects it. With the average car on American roads now pushing 13 years old, the cost of car ownership is increasingly key to financial stability for many.
“The difference to maintain a car on average between some brands can be thousands over a 10-year time frame,” says Steven Elek, Consumer Reports’ program leader for auto data analytics. “Also, expensive luxury vehicles are often quite expensive to maintain as well over time.”
Consumer Reports studied cumulative maintenance and repair costs over the first five and 10 years of car ownership by brand. The results hold a few surprises. Though Toyota and its Lexus brand tend to dominate CR’s reliability ratings, neither did better than third here.
And though CR has found that electric vehicles (EVs) suffer more problems than gas-powered cars, Tesla, the all-EV brand, took first place.
CR’s Methods Are Unique
Before we get into the results, it’s worth noting that CR’s methods differ from those of other car reliability studies.
CR is a magazine and website that requires a subscription to read. It gets its data by surveying its own subscribers.
That method has strengths – it gives CR a solid picture of the reliability of the cars its members tend to buy. But it also has weaknesses – it limits CR’s picture to the cars its members tend to buy. Not everyone would pay a subscription fee for access to lists of reliable products. CR readers are a subset of the population, filtered to find the pickiest.
The numbers below come from their experiences.
The Rankings:
| Rank | Brand | 5-Year Cost to Own | 10-Year Cost to Own |
| 1 | Tesla | $580 | $4,035 |
| 2 | Buick | $900 | $4,900 |
| 3 | Toyota | $1,125 | $4,900 |
| 4 | Lincoln | $940 | $5,040 |
| 5 | Ford | $1,100 | $5,400 |
| 6 | Chevrolet | $1,200 | $5,550 |
| 7 | Hyundai | $1,140 | $5,640 |
| 8 | Nissan | $1,300 | $5,700 |
| 9 | Mazda | $1,400 | $5,800 |
| 10 | Honda | $1,435 | $5,835 |
| 11 | Kia | $1,450 | $5,850 |
| 12 (tie) | Dodge | $1,200 | $6,400 |
| 12 (tie) | Jeep | $1,100 | $6,400 |
| 13 | Chrysler | $1,600 | $6,500 |
| 14 | Volkswagen | $1,095 | $6,530 |
| 15 | Cadillac | $1,125 | $6,565 |
| 16 | Ram | $1,470 | $6,670 |
| 17 | Lexus | $1,750 | $6,750 |
| 18 | GMC | $1,400 | $7,200 |
| 19 | Subaru | $1,700 | $7,200 |
| 20 | Mini | $1,525 | $7,625 |
| 21 | Acura | $1,800 | $7,800 |
| 22 | Infiniti | $2,150 | $8,500 |
| 23 | Volvo | $1,785 | $9,285 |
| 24 | BMW | $1,700 | $9,500 |
| 25 | Audi | $1,900 | $9,890 |
| 26 | Mercedes-Benz | $2,850 | $10,525 |
| 27 | Porsche | $4,000 | $14,090 |
| 28 | Land Rover | $4,250 | $19,250 |
The Lessons
Buying the wrong car can cost you as much as $15,215 dollars more than necessary over a decade. It pays (literally) to study cost of ownership before you buy.
Electric cars have fewer moving parts than gas-powered cars. Advocates have long promised that would mean lower maintenance and repair costs over time. That hasn’t always proven true. But engineers tend to get better at solving the problems of a technology with experience, and the brand that has sold the most EVs appears to have sorted out some of the technology’s quirks.
Legacy automakers will likely catch up quickly, but they’re not there yet.
Long warranties save you money in the long run, but not as much as simply buying a reliable car. Kia and Hyundai both provide powertrain warranties often twice as long as their competitors, but that hasn’t moved them to the top of this list.
Lastly, complexity has costs. European luxury brands sold with huge feature lists cluster at the bottom of the list. It’s possible to buy a luxury car that won’t cost you a fortune in maintenance – Ford’s Lincoln luxury brand outperforms Ford, and GM’s Buick outperforms its mainstream Chevrolet cousin.
“If you are considering a luxury model, it may be wise to purchase one from a domestic brand that may have lower maintenance and repair costs,” says Elek. “For example, over 10 years, Mercedes-Benz models are more than double the cost to maintain and repair as those from Lincoln.”
