Consumer Reports investigation shows maintenance and repair costs can be $15,000 higher if you pick the wrong brand
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- A new study from Consumer Reports has revealed the true running costs of popular brands’ cars over a 10-year period.
- Data shows that choosing one brand could result in you paying five times as much in maintenance and repairs.
- Teslas are by far the least expensive to run and Land Rover products the most expensive, the study claims.
A vehicle’s price—whether the upfront cost or the monthly loan payment—and gas mileage numbers help us work out whether we can afford to run that new car we’re considering buying. Maintenance costs should also figure big in our calculations, but those stats aren’t as easy to come by, until now.
The latest study by Consumer Reports produced some solid real world data looking at which brands’ vehicles cost the most and which cost the least to run over a 10-year period. To do that it asked CR members taking part in its annual reliability study how much they’d spent on servicing and repairs in the previous 12 months.
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Owners were told to include expenses related to things like oil and tire changes, and the cost of rectifying any faults, but not money spent on fixing collision damage. And the results were startling, owners of the most financially ruinous brand paying $15,000, or five times as much over a 10-year period as those driving a car from the brand with the lowest running costs.
The brand with the least expensive running costs at the 10-year point was Tesla, which is interesting because Tesla only placed-mid-table in the reliability study used as the jumping off point for this new report. A decade in a Tesla could cost you $4,035, CR says, compared with $4,900 in a Toyota, $9,500 in a BMW and a shocking $19,250 in a Land Rover.
While it’s perhaps not surprising to find premium and luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes at the pricey end of the table, some high-end cars are much more affordable to run than others. CR points out that a Lincoln only costs $5,040 over 10 years, but a Mercedes dealer will ask twice as much of you.
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The 29 brands also don’t necessarily retain the same position in the chart throughout the 10-year period, in part because some offer long service intervals that means early-year costs are low. A Volkswagen, for instance, is the third most affordable brand over the first five years, but drops to 15th place over the full decade.