Car Brands With the Highest Maintenance Costs over the First 10-years

Owning a car is expensive business in today’s world. Road tax, fuel, insurance and maintenance are only some of the costs associated with owning a 4-wheel motor vehicle. The sticker price is only the beginning though, because as soon as you start driving, the value begins to decrease with some brands doing so more aggressively than others.

Websites such a YourMechanic.com have large databases full of useful information about how much vehicle brands cost over a period of time to maintain and keep on the road. A recent set of data was released to show drivers how much a specific brands would cost over time in relation to each other. The data examined provides insightful information consisting of the types of maintenance completed, the model of cars, the frequency and which are most likely to break down.

What becomes apparent after reading through the data is which major car brands around the world cost the most to maintain over the first 10-year period of their life. The way in which the average was determined across all vehicles was by collecting data from all years of all models by brand to compute the cost. To estimate the annual cost, a base figure for each brand was determined by the cost of two oil changes per year, which is the recommended number (once every six months).

According to this report from YourMechanic.com it was revealed that BMW worked out to be the most expensive brand that a vehicle owner could possess and not by a small amount either. The 10-year cost of owning a BMW worked out to be $23,400 over the period and in general most of the luxury brands were the most expensive too. This was to be expected, however, there were some budget brands that crept into to unexpected higher ranks too which surprised many of us.

Toyota was the best value brand for maintenance coming in with the lowest 10-year cost and ranked at number 30 on the list. Scion and Lexus came in as runners up to the cheapest vehicles to run compared to all other brands, not surprisingly they are also part of the Toyota group.

If you don’t own a BMW and are skipping around the room currently, don’t be so hasty, as below is a list of all the other vehicles that were ranked, check out to see where your vehicle currently lies. Alternatively, if you are planning on buying a new car and have been researching online for vehicle running and maintenance costs, this could be a very good place to start.

Which Vehicle Brands Cost the Most to Maintain