Cars that we keep forever

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HTSS_TR

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Is it surprising that all 15 are Japanese family cars, mostly minivans and crossovers?

The average age of cars on the road now is 11.5 years, which says good things about the reliability of today's auto fleet.

So which cars do original owners hold on to? Iseecars.com just crunched the numbers (it's a Big Data company) and came up with a list that maps the fate of 15 2005-model-year vehicles. And guess what? They're all Japanese! Not a Korean, German or domestic in sight. In fact, they come from only three car makers: Toyota, Honda and Subaru.


http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs/15-cars-we-keep-forever?ref=yfp

If they do the same data crunching 5 years later for model year 2010 we may see some non-Japanese vehicles and/or other Japanese makers such as Mazda makes the list

But, so far Toyota tops the reliable list is a known fact for many many years. That how they sell more Camry than anybody for long long time.

This list is very similar with CR annual car report, CR also found that Toyota was/is more reliable than other makers. You may not trust CR for anything else, but vehicle reliability is one of their best features, many consumers use their data to buy their own vehicles.
 
Toyota has had their issues, but from experience our 2001 Camry still runs and does everything with aplomb 14 years later, the Highlander is also following its older garage mate .safe, dead reliable and boring works at this stage of life.
 
To be fair I've had excellent service from late 90s Nissan products as well, almost as good as the Toyota's.
 
I buy used. Typically I buy domestic because the parts are cheap, repairs easy, and the owners have "low vehicular self esteem" and there are a dozen more saturns, fords, etc available after I look at the first one. I try to buy something that needs a weekend of wrenching and the Prior Owner is just sick of it, and "won't put another nickel into it."

I would not buy a used camry from a stranger. I sort of expect their buyers to wear them out from cradle to grave. This perception of retail value translates to actual retail value. I bet if they looked their car up on KBB.com and had to self-evaluate its condition, they'd say "excellent", even though the brake lines are as rusty as a Chrysler's and the car's still on the original coolant and ATF. It's difficult to reason with such a seller and there'll be another buyer in line behind me saying "shut up and take my money."

I perceive there to be enough idiots to pay $5000 for a 15 year old rusty one with 230,000 miles that I won't allow myself to compete.

However, my parents were about to trade their 2002 in for peanuts. I snapped it up. It's nice, but I wouldn't pay retail.
 
Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
But, so far Toyota tops the reliable list is a known fact for many many years. That how they sell more Camry than anybody for long long time.

Well, technically, if you like the car so much that you hold onto it longer and don't buy a new one, then wouldn't that result in fewer new car sales for the manufacturer?
smile.gif
But when you eventually do buy that new car, it'll probably be another Toyota, so you're not losing to competition.

As a side note, I've now owned the 530i for 9 years. That's longer than I thought I would when I first bought it. It does cost money to keep on the road, so I perfectly understand why it's nowhere to be found in that ranking. Once in a while I do get an itch to buy a new car, but then when I think of all that depreciation happening while the car just sits in the garage, I back off.
 
Yeah I'm a Toyota fanboy, I've only had my Camry for less than 2 months and now almost 4,000 miles and all I've done is change the oil once and throw some spark plugs in it and a valve cover gasket because I wanted to start off on a clean slate. Hopefully the next 100k miles it will be good to me. It has to be better than my VW, or at least cheaper. Anything is cheaper than that piece of junk.
 
Originally Posted By: eljefino
I would not buy a used camry from a stranger. I sort of expect their buyers to wear them out from cradle to grave. This perception of retail value translates to actual retail value. I bet if they looked their car up on KBB.com and had to self-evaluate its condition, they'd say "excellent", even though the brake lines are as rusty as a Chrysler's and the car's still on the original coolant and ATF. It's difficult to reason with such a seller and there'll be another buyer in line behind me saying "shut up and take my money."

True.

I sold my friend neglected 1991 Accord LX with 200k miles in 2007 for more than $2k less than 2 hours on local Craigslist.

Yes, that Accord had original fluids for brake system, coolant, ATF, PSF ... Only maintenance my friend ever did was oil and filter, spark plugs and timing belt. Wear and tear items such as brake pads, wiper blades, tires were replaced only when they didn't work anymore. Brake fluid, ATF and PSF were as black as ink but they were working okay.

I expected to get around $1200-1500 for the car in that condition, but got full asking price without negotiation.
 
I really wish I had been able to buy my Dodge Aries new in 1988,I wouldn't have had to go thru an 89 S10,93 Colt and 00 Mirage just to get that same 88 at the 21 year old mark.
 
Those vehicles all offer reasonable service over long haul and were decent to start with. However buyers attracted to those tend to be more financially prudent and understand value economics of repair/maintain vs replace. Brand perception helps in argument they "last" forever.

Sienna, ody, highlander, pilot, crv are all really 10yr old popular vehicles in the neighborhood I live in full of high six figure incomes(excluding me
frown.gif
)
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
But, so far Toyota tops the reliable list is a known fact for many many years. That how they sell more Camry than anybody for long long time.

Well, technically, if you like the car so much that you hold onto it longer and don't buy a new one, then wouldn't that result in fewer new car sales for the manufacturer?
smile.gif
But when you eventually do buy that new car, it'll probably be another Toyota, so you're not losing to competition.

As a side note, I've now owned the 530i for 9 years. That's longer than I thought I would when I first bought it. It does cost money to keep on the road, so I perfectly understand why it's nowhere to be found in that ranking. Once in a while I do get an itch to buy a new car, but then when I think of all that depreciation happening while the car just sits in the garage, I back off.

Toyota has a good captive customers and they also have new buyers used to own other brands.

This example is not a typical household, my 5-6 doors down the road neighbor has 3 cars and they are Camry within 2-3 model years, two white and 1 grey.

The problem is someone stated that car manufactures designed in failure rate to sell next vehicles soon after warranty expired. This statement was and is totally incorrect. Evey markers want their vehicles as reliable as can be within budget, but to achieve that goal is not easy.

Domestic manufactures(GM, Ford and Chrysler) had reliability problem in the '70, '80 and '90 but they were better in '00 and are close to Japanese now.

European makers are in general is not as reliable as Japanese brands, also cost of replacement parts are higher therefore not as many owners keeps their vehicle for much longer than 8-10 years.

I'm lucky that my almost 16 years old 170+k miles E430 was/is fairly reliable, not many parts failed the last 10 years. On average, the cost of repair was less than $400-500/yr. Maintenance and wear/tear cost wasn't high either at less than $200/yr. The most costly was tire, I needed to replace a set every 15-25k miles. 8.5 quarts synthetic oil for 10-13k/12mo which is very reasonable.
 
I don't see how people can keep a car for over 10 years. Me personally I get sick of looking at the same car for that long. I could not imagine driving the same minivan for 10+ years.
 
I purchased my Honda new and it's been my daily driver for 31 years with no problems except California smog which forced a rebuild at 400K because of occasional visible smoke, oil rings. Most people miss the fact that none of the small items or accessories have ever failed like the window regulators, windshield wipers, heater, alternator, door locks or other small stuff that could nickle dime you as the car ages. I have no plans to every sell this car and hope that I'll be able to drive it to my funeral (lol).
 
No surprise there. Toyota is the best, and Honda is good, too.

Nissan is a step or two below them. The VQ engine is overrated with too many silly design quirks.
 
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