This week, results from a longevity study of vehicles most likely to reach 250,000 miles found that (surprise, no surprise) Toyota dominates the top rankings. In the top 10, Toyota took the first five spots plus another Toyota and Lexus further down that list. There are a couple of GM products and a Honda in there somewhere, but the point being: Toyotas, for the most part, live up to the hype as some of the most reliable machines you can own. Sorry, Cybertruck.
Car search engine site iSeeCars (“the Kayak.com for people in the market to buy a car”) recently released its latest longevity report to show which of its 402 million vehicles it has analyzed in the U.S. lasts the longest. The site’s been doing this for more than a decade now, so there’s definitely credence to its findings. The researchers took average odometer readings of each vehicle for each model year, then used a proprietary model to estimate the probability of a car surviving various mileage thresholds, in this case, 250,000 miles. Note that iSeeCars found the overall probability of this study was 8.6%.
Taking that into account, Toyota almost doubles that average with a 17% chance of reaching 250k miles. Honda came in next at 13.6%, while Ram was third at 11.5%. In fact, many individual models reached even higher averages. According to Karl Brauer, iSeeCar’s Executive Analyst, “modern vehicles are getting more durable, with 30 models offering between a 12% and 36% chance of reaching a quarter million miles.” He adds that the on-going thought that cars don’t last beyond 100,000 miles seems more of a fallacy nowadays. Brauer explains that, “the top nine cars on this year’s list have a better than 20 percent chance of hitting 250,000 miles.”
For what it’s worth, most of the vehicles on the list are comprised of truck-based platforms. Here’s the breakdown of the top 10 along with the percentage chance of lasting 250k miles:
- Toyota Tundra – 36.6%
- Toyota Sequoia – 36.4%
- Toyota 4Runner – 26.8%
- Toyota Tacoma – 26.7%
- Toyota Highlander Hybrid – 25.9%
- Honda Ridgeline – 25.8%
- Chevrolet Suburban – 22.0%
- Toyota Avalon – 22.0%
- Lexus GS – 20.7%
- Chevrolet Silverado 1500 18.8%
The site also ranked the odds to hit 250K miles by brand, with the pecking order landing at Toyota (17%), Honda (13.6%), Ram (11.5%), GMC (11.4%), Chevrolet (10.5%), Lexus (9.7%), and Ford (9.5%).