America’s Longest-Lasting Car

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 10, 9:15AM EDT

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A recent analysis reveals that Toyota produces unusually sturdy, long-lasting cars.
The most durable vehicles in America are mostly SUVs and pickups.

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America’s Longest-Lasting Car — © burwellphotography / E+ via Getty Images

The chance that a vehicle driven in the United States stays on the road for 250,000 miles or more is extremely small. iSeeCars used mileage figures from 174 million vehicles to identify the one with the highest chance of exceeding that threshold. Across all models in America, the figure was only 4.8%.

iSeeCars Executive Analyst Karl Brauer commented, “The top-ranked Toyota Sequoia is truly impressive. With a 39.1% predicted chance to reach 250,000 miles, the Sequoia is more than eight times as likely to hit that milestone as the average vehicle.” Toyotas are unusually sturdy. Of the 25 longest-lasting cars, 10 were Toyotas, including the top four. The Toyota luxury brand, Lexus, had another four in the top 25. Five on the list were from Honda, which shows that the two Japanese companies build unusually long-lived vehicles.

Toyota Sequoia (39.1%)
Toyota 4Runner (32.9%)
Toyota Highlander Hybrid (31.0%)
Toyota Tundra (30.0%)
Lexus IS (27.5%)
Toyota Tacoma (25.3%)
Toyota Avalon (18.9%)
Lexus GX (18.3%)
Lexus RX hybrid (17.0%)
Honda Ridgeline (14.7%)

Among American car brands, Chevy topped the list, but with only two models: the Chevy Silverado and the Chevy Silverado 1500. The first is Chevy’s massive SUV, the other Chevy’s full-sized pickup.

The Sequoia is an extremely large SUV. The current model has three rows of seats and an unusually powerful engine. It is also expensive, with a base price of $64,000, which can reach $80,000 with a modest number of added features. That puts it well above the U.S. average price of a new car, which is $48,000.

The Sequoia is also part of a trend: most of the 25 most durable vehicles are SUVs or pickups. One of Brauer’s theories is that because of the high price of new vehicles, Americans tend to keep their cars longer. However, 250,000 miles is an unusual expectation.

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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.