A car costs much money up front and even more in its older years. When that high-cost period kicks in, expenses can vary significantly from brand to brand.
According to Consumer Reports, four of the five least-expensive brands to maintain over a decade of ownership are domestic. Unsurprisingly, the best of the best is electric. Electric cars have fewer moving parts and, thus, fewer parts that can break.
Consumer Reports Surveys Are Unique
Most automotive reliability studies try to examine every car for sale in the U.S., exempting low-volume rarities few can afford. Consumer Reports studies a smaller set, but its list tends to include the best-selling models.
CR is a magazine with consumer ratings for cars, home appliances, and other goods. The magazine conducts its studies by surveying its subscribers. That means that, over time, it can study a shrinking subset of the market as its buyers tend to gravitate toward the products it recommends. Still, the magazine gets deep, reliable data on popular models.
Related: What Is Total Cost of Ownership?
For its maintenance study, CR asked members “to tell us how much they paid out of pocket for their total maintenance (oil changes, etc.) and repairs during the previous 12 months.” Researchers track data on cars up to ten years old.
Costs Soar After Year Five
Those numbers tend to be low when a car is new. A comprehensive warranty covers most new vehicles for the first three years (five for some brands). Some also include free maintenance periods early on (though those are always of questionable value – cars need little maintenance when they’re new).
Related: Car Warranty Guide – Everything You Need to Know
“Costs can skyrocket when the warranty and free maintenance periods are over,” CR says.
“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.”
CR finds domestic luxury cars beat imported ones over the long haul. “For example, over ten years, Mercedes-Benz models are more than double the cost to maintain and repair as those from Lincoln,” Elek says.
Related: Cars, Trucks, and SUVs With The Lowest 5-Year Cost of Ownership
The Least Expensive Car Brands Over Ten Years of Maintenance
CR found 10-year maintenance costs as low as $4,035 (Tesla) and as high as $19,250 (Land Rover). The magazine shows identical scores for second and third place but ranks them anyway, so there may have been a difference smaller than a dollar between the two.
The top ten were:
| Rank | Brand | Total Maintenance Cost Over 10 Years |
| 1 | Tesla | $4,035 |
| 2 | Buick | $4,900 |
| 3 | Toyota | $4,900 |
| 4 | Lincoln | $5,040 |
| 5 | Ford | $5,400 |
| 6 | Chevrolet | $5,550 |
| 7 | Hyundai | $5,640 |
| 8 | Nissan | $5,700 |
| 9 | Mazda | $5,800 |
| 10 | Honda | $5,850 |
