What Cars do You Swear By?
Just found out that my current car will die any day now due to a known defect. It's out of warranty and I have no money to replace it right now.
I've been cursed with car problems my whole life, no matter how well I take care of them, I keep getting screwed.
All of the cars have been Fords because I always heard they were generally dependable and cheap to repair/upkeep, but so far they have all failed me.
What cars do y'all recommend? What cars do you have that just won't give up the ghost no matter how old/beat up they get? If your life depended on your car lasting as long as possible, what car would you drive?
I want whatever car I get next to last me 10-20 years. I want to be that person posting a picture of the odometer hitting 300k miles. I also don't care much about features, reliability is key.
Don’t trust what people say from their individual stories. You need statistics of hundreds of cars, not single anecdotes. There must be sites that evaluate cars reliability, average spending on repairs and so on, model by model. Find those.
This is good advice in general.
But the answer to this question is extremely well known across the internet and every thread that comes up will eventually boil down to the same two responses: Toyota and Honda as 1 and 1a.
There isn't some secret answer to find, those are just the answers. People will definitely come up with anecdotes supporting various other cars, but as these threads hit a certain mass of replies they invariably boil down to those two choices.
They are not the flashiest cars, nor the most feature rich, nor the most efficient or most powerful. But if you want to buy a car that will just keep on running after years of minimal maintenance, often even after being abused during that time, a Toyota or Honda is what you should buy.
Prius/Prius prime might not be the most efficient but it's pretty damn good.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/ is exactly that!
If you really want a long lasting machine, listen to this person. So much nose in this thread. For example: Subarus, in fact, do not have reputation for being long lasting without major repairs. Most people do not keep a vehicle for 10+ years nor for 300k miles. I have a vehicle that is older than that with 30% more miles. As said above, an anecdote.
Somebody keeps track of the cost of ownership over time. Perhaps a company, maybe a government agency.
Good luck!
The average car age in the EU is 12 years old. Even in richer member states the average is often over 10 years (germany: 10.1, Netherlands: 11.4)
So at least in that part of the world, most people absolutely do keep a vehicle for 10+ years.
Source: https://www.acea.auto/figure/average-age-of-eu-vehicle-fleet-by-country/
The average in the US is 12.5 years old.
https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/average-age-of-light-vehicles-in-the-us-hits-record-high.html
I think people's impression of things is skewed because overall cars are much more reliable than they used to be. When I was a kid a car over 10 years old was something you expected to have issues, and certainly wanted to avoid buying. That's not the case these days, and the huge numbers of functional older cars on the roads make us not realize just how many old vehicles are out there because they're normalized.
My car is 15 years old, my wife's is 9. They're both perfectly fine and they don't feel old to us.
I agree entirely with what you are saying, but that doesn't change what I said about how long people keep the same car. I suspect we are in the midst of the length of ownership increasing, but not to 10-20 years on average.
Spent 10k on a 2014 Subaru Outback with 120k miles, headgasket leak. First and only owner. Whats even worse is brake error light after spending that much. Carmaxed that junk. I will never ever buy a Subaru. Replaced it with a Honda.
Yeah you’re the kind of anecdote they’re warning about
https://www.carcomplaints.com/
Take any site with a grain of salt, but I find they're usually not too bad for a general idea of what you may be in for.
This one is my favorite and was super helpful last time I was looking for a car. You can see trends year over year in the same generation, so like if the first 2 years of a 4 year run had some chronic issue that was fixed for the last 2, that sticks out.
Yup, the only real gripe I have is a small percentage of the complaints seem to be more user error than design flaw, but that's to be expected from any review site.