Most Reliable Cars from Auto Repair Shops: Honda, Lexus, Hyundai, Mazda, Kia, Toyota & Acura

Automotive service and repair app and website RepairPal.com, released the its repair-driven Reliability Ratings. Based on millions of vehicle repair orders from car repair shops. The data from their survey is different from the “Top Best Consolidation Reliability Data” that AUTO Connected Car News published earlier.

The study finds that the average annual repair cost for all cars is $620 per year. This includes both major scheduled maintenance and unscheduled repairs. The average car visits a repair shop approximately once every two years for major unscheduled repair, or 0.5 times per year. The best cars average 2-3 years before needing a major repair, while  some models average multiple visits per year.
The top brands with ratings of 4.5 out 5 were from asian automakers Honda, Lexus, Hyundai, Mazda, Kia, Toyota, and Acura all scoring an Excellent rating of 4.5 out of 5.
Honda led all brands in reliability, with their 3 most popular CR-V, Civic, and Accord models ranking in the top 10 most reliable cars.
Lexus was the second most reliable brand overall and highest-ranking luxury brand due to Excellent ratings on the popular ES, IS, and RX models. The Lexus ES and Acura ILX were the highest rating luxury models, which is not surprising given they share platforms with the Camry and Civic respectively.
Toyota and Honda accounted for several of the most reliable cars in the study. The Toyota Yaris ranked first and is the only car in  to score an excellent rating of 5.0 out of 5.0 The Toyota Corolla Reliability Rating is 4.5 out of 5.0, which ranks it 3rd out of 116 for compact cars. The average annual repair cost is $359 which means it has excellent ownership costs. The severity of repairs is below average and the frequency of those issues is low, so based on this the Corolla is one of the most reliable vehicles on the road.
The Toyota Prius which is often mentioned in reliability studies received the Reliability Rating of 4.5 out of 5.0, which ranks it 4th out of 94 for midsize cars. The average annual repair cost is $415 which means it has excellent ownership costs. The severity of repairs is below average and the frequency of those issues is low, so based on this the Prius is one of the most reliable vehicles on the road.

Mazda and Kia were the most consistently reliable brands, ranking fourth and fifth respectively and scoring 4.0 or higher on every model.

The BMW 335d scored lowest in reliability due to its high probability of expensive repairs.

RepairPal’s Reliability Rating analyzed millions of vehicle repairs for 2010-2017 model year cars to generate our scores, and models without sufficient data were exclude.

RepairPal’s Certified Network of over 2,000 shops, the Reliability Rating is the first dependability metric to derive scores from real-world data.

RepairPal’s Reliability Rating was derived from millions of repair orders on model years between 2010 through 2017. It is based on the cost, frequency, and severity of repairs. Vehicles that did not have sufficient data for statistical significance were omitted.

1 thought on “Most Reliable Cars from Auto Repair Shops: Honda, Lexus, Hyundai, Mazda, Kia, Toyota & Acura”

  1. Mine is a Honda, never had any major problems with it yet with my 3 yrs of experience using it. Honda’s reputation it really good when it comes to reliability.

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