America’s Longest-Lasting Cars

By Paul Ausick Updated Jan 12, 1:25AM EST · Published Apr 15, 9:10AM EDT

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America’s Longest-Lasting Cars — © Toyota Motor Corp.

The average age of a vehicle still being driven in the United States is about 12 years. That’s a long time and at an average number of miles driven per year of 12,000, U.S. cars and light trucks (pickups, SUVs, and crossovers) have been driven an average of around 144,000 miles.

What vehicle should you buy if you want to drive it for at least 200,000 miles? The researchers at iSeeCars.com have analyzed sales of 13.5 million used vehicles sold in 2017 that were built between 1981 and 2017 and calculated the percentage of cars with at least that many miles on the clock.

The results show that the longest lasting vehicles are SUVs and that five of the seven SUVs on the list were manufactured by U.S.-based carmakers. The only passenger car to make the list was the Avalon from Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) which also led all carmakers by placing four vehicles among the top ten.

Obviously that’s both good news and bad news for Toyota. The company’s cars are durable, but that means the sales of new cars may be negatively affected because the cars last for such a long time. In an report published in January, iSeeCars.com listed the vehicles that original owners have kept for at least 15 years. Toyota placed nine vehicles among the 15 that lasted longest.

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Here are the 10 longest-lasting vehicles along with the percentage of each that have clocked more than 200,000 miles. The average percentage of all vehicles lasting longer than 200,000 miles is 1.2%.

Toyota Sequoia: 6.6%
Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) Expedition: 5.4%
General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) Chevrolet Suburban: 5.2%
Toyota 4Runner: 4.2%
GMC Yukon XL: 3.9%
Chevrolet Tahoe: 3.8%
GMC Yukon: 2.8%
Toyota Tacoma: 2.6%
Toyota Avalon: 2.4%
Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (NYSE: HMC): 2.4%

The Toyota Avalon and the Honda Odyssey were the longest-lasting passenger cars followed by the Honda Accord (2%), the Ford Taurus (1.8%), and the Toyota Sienna (1.7%). The hybrid electric Toyota Prius placed eighth in the passenger car rankings at 1.3% leading iSeeCars.com CEO Phong Ly to note that its ranking “helps dispel the concerns about its reliability and battery durability.”

Among pickup trucks, the best-selling vehicle in the United States, the Ford F-150, ranked fifth with 1.9% on the list of longest-lasting trucks.

The list of longest-lasting luxury vehicles was led by GM’s Cadillac with the Escalade ESV and the Escalade both lasting 1.6% longer than the 1.2% average for all vehicles.

The full listings and additional information and comments are available at the iSeeCars.com website.

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About the Author Paul Ausick →

Paul Ausick has been writing for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.