This Car Holds Its Value Better Than Any Other in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 5, 11:00AM EDT

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This Car Holds Its Value Better Than Any Other in America — © UWMadison / iStock via Getty Images

A car begins to depreciate as soon as you drive it off the lot — but not all cars lose as much value over time. The car that holds its value better than any other in America is the Jeep Wrangler.

Used cars have done relatively well. Sizing up the car market over the past year, iSeeCars Executive Analyst Karl Brauer put it this way, “We’ve seen record high used car prices over the past 15 months as a result of the microchip shortage, and that has slowed down the average depreciation rate across all vehicles.”

Still, Brauer added that indeed “Vehicles that have historically maintained their value well have depreciated even less this past year, but even in today’s market some cars continue to drastically drop in value.” (Find out which is the longest lasting cars on the road.)

Car prices, both used and new, have skyrocketed in the past year for several reasons. Among them is pent-up demand. Dealerships were closed for weeks, and sometimes months, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

More recently, the supply of cars has plummeted, due in part to a severe shortage of the semiconductors used in car electronics systems. This shortage will not let up until next year. In the meantime, many dealers are nearly empty of inventory, and manufacturers have had to shutter some assembly lines. (As for new cars, these are the fastest selling cars in America right now.)

The reason for used car price spikes is simple. People who do not want to wait for the latest make and model of the cars they want buy them used instead. Yet, not all cars hold their value well over time, despite this recent surge in demand.

For its Top 10 Cars That Hold Their Value Best: Five-Year-Car Depreciation Across All Vehicle Segments study, research and car sales company iSeeCars reviewed more than 800,000 used cars from model year 2016 sold between January and August 2021 to find those with the lowest and highest loss in value from manufacturer’s suggested retail price after five years.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed iSeeCars study and listed the 20 cars that hold their value the best. While the average five-year depreciation across all vehicles considered was 40.1%, the cars on this list lost 31.2% of their value or less over the last five years.

The car with the lowest five-year depreciation is the Jeep Wrangler at only 9.2%. The car with the second-lowest depreciation is a Jeep as well, the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, which has four doors and a five-year depreciation rate of only 10.5%.

Jeep Wranglers retain their value “due to their enthusiastic fanbase, as well as their durability and performance across all terrains, especially off-road. Jeep Wranglers also have maintained their iconic design, so even older models don’t appear dated.”

Click here to see the car that holds its value better than any other in America

20. Mazda MX-5 Miata
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 31.2%
> Dollar difference: $10,288

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19. Chevrolet Silverado 1500
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 31.0%
> Dollar difference: $13,441

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18. GMC Sierra 1500
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 30.7%
> Dollar difference: $13,649

17. Honda Civic
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 30.4%
> Dollar difference: $7,240

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16. Subaru WRX
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 29.4%
> Dollar difference: $10,339

Subaru BRZ (CC BY 2.0) by Rutger van der Maar

15. Subaru BRZ
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 28.0%
> Dollar difference: $8,601

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14. Nissan Frontier
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 27.8%
> Dollar difference: $8,391

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13. Chevrolet Corvette
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 27.7%
> Dollar difference: $23,535

12. Chevrolet Colorado
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 27.1%
> Dollar difference: $7,677

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11. GMC Canyon
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 25.6%
> Dollar difference: $8,088

10. Toyota 4Runner
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 24.6%
> Dollar difference: $10,818

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9. Dodge Challenger
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 24.4%
> Dollar difference: $10,308

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8. Chevrolet Camaro
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 23.6%
> Dollar difference: $8,553

7. Chevrolet Corvette
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 22.7%
> Dollar difference: $17,655

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6. Ford Mustang
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 21.0%
> Dollar difference: $7,280

5. Toyota Tundra
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 19.5%
> Dollar difference: $8,458

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4. Toyota Tacoma
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 13.8%
> Dollar difference: $4,899

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3. Porsche 911
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 12.8%
> Dollar difference: $20,710

2. Jeep Wrangler Unlimited
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 10.5%
> Dollar difference: $3,810

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1. Jeep Wrangler
> Five-year depreciation (pct.) 9.2%
> Dollar difference: $2,796

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.