These Are America’s Best Used Cars

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 8, 9:05AM EST

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These Are America’s Best Used Cars — © Courtesy of Toyota

The car market, deeply damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, has begun to watch sales return to pre-March 2020 levels. Some models posted sales declines of over a third as people avoided dealerships. Even today, more people shop online and do not enter dealerships until they take possession of their vehicles.

One of the unexpected trends as car buyers returned to the market was the run-up in used car sales. The trend has been based on two factors. The first is the high prices of new cars. The other is that cars are much more dependable than they were a decade ago. The demand has even pushed used car prices higher than they have been in recent memory.

As is the case with new cars, not all used cars are created, or driven, equally.

To create its list of best-used cars for 2021, iSeeCars looked at data on 24 million vehicles from its earlier 2020 studies on the longest-lasting cars and cars that hold their value. They also considered safety data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2011 to 2020. This agency performs crash tests on dozens of vehicles.
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iSeeCars divided the used car market into 23 categories that covered several types of sport utility vehicles, pickups, sedans and others. It also chose the highest-rated used cars for under $5,000 and under $10,000.

It comes as no surprise that Japanese brands did particularly well. They have led car quality surveys for decades. Toyota and Honda had several vehicles in the rankings, and their luxury brands, Acura and Lexus, did well also. Pickups have become Detroit’s strength in the past several years. The best-selling new vehicles in America are the Ford F-150, Chevy Silverado and the Ram brand. However, a Japanese brand beat them out, as the Toyota Tundra took first place in the used full-sized truck category.

For the genuinely frugal buyers, the best car under $10,000 was the Toyota Yaris. The best for under $5,000 was the Mazda3.

These are the iSeeCars highest quality used brands for 2021:

Best Compact SUV: Honda CR-V

Best Luxury Compact SUV: Acura RDX

Best Midsize SUV: Toyota Highlander

Best Luxury Midsize SUV: Acura MDX

Best Full-Size SUV: Chevrolet Tahoe

Best Luxury Full-Size SUV: Lincoln Navigator

Best Third Row SUV: Toyota Highlander

Best Luxury Third Row SUV: Acura MDX

Best Midsize Truck: Toyota Tacoma

Best Full-Size Truck: Toyota Tundra

Best Compact Car: Honda Civic

Best Luxury Compact Car: Lexus IS 250

Best Midsize Sedan: Honda Accord

Best Luxury Midsize Sedan: Lexus ES 350

Best Large Sedan: Toyota Avalon

Best Luxury Large Sedan: Buick LaCrosse

Best Sports Car: Ford Mustang

Best Electric Car: Tesla Model S

Best Hybrid Car: Toyota Prius

Best Hybrid SUV: Toyota Highlander Hybrid

Best Minivan: Honda Odyssey

Best Car Under $5K: Mazda MAZDA3

Best Car Under $10K: Toyota Yaris

Click here to see which new cars are most likely to break down.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.