Study Shows Which Cars Owners Keep Driving
CARS.COM — You know the adage of driving a car until the wheels fall off? It turns out about 1 in 8 new-car shoppers go a long way toward doing just that. Used-car shopping website iSeeCars.com reports 12.9 percent of original owners hold onto their cars for 10 or more years. But for certain models, more than 20 percent of owners hang onto their purchase that long.
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The Massachusetts-based website analyzed CarFax vehicle-history data for more than 2.5 million cars from the 1981 to 2006 model years to find how many original owners hung onto their cars for a decade or longer. Toyota and its Lexus luxury brand dominated, but Honda also had a strong showing. Only one other automaker — Subaru — made it into the top 10.
Here are the cars with the highest percentage of original owners who keep their cars for 10 or more years, according to iSeeCars.com:
- 1. Toyota Highlander Hybrid: 32.1 percent
- 2. Toyota Prius: 32.0 percent
- 3. Toyota Highlander: 29.0 percent
- 4. Toyota Sienna: 28.7 percent
- 5. Honda Pilot: 27.2 percent
- 6. Honda CR-V: 25.2 percent
- 7. Toyota RAV4: 24.9 percent
- 8. Subaru Forester: 24.2 percent
- 9. Lexus RX Hybrid: 24.1 percent
- 10. Honda Odyssey: 24.0 percent
Sedans, coupes and pickup trucks were also a no-show; so were any cars from Detroit automakers. The reasons are up for debate, but one thing appears clear: Family shoppers looking for a Toyota or Honda are likelier to own their cars a long time. The top 10 cars from iSeeCars’ list had nine Toyota and Honda models. And eight of those nine were SUVs or minivans.
“These kinds of cars tend to be used as family cars, so they might be expected to be kept for many years if they’re bought just as their owners start their new families,” iSeeCars.com CEO Phong Ly said in a statement.
About 22 percent of original Toyota owners keep their cars for 10 years or longer, the website said. For Honda, it’s 20.2 percent; it’s 19.1 percent for Subaru. Below that is Acura (17.8 percent), Hyundai (17.4 percent) and Lexus (16.5 percent). The highest Detroit brand was GMC, for which iSeeCars said 13 percent of original owners keep their cars for 10 years or longer. That’s about the market average (again, 12.9 percent).
Among some of the most popular cars, percentages were all over the board:
- Toyota Camry: 20.3 percent of original owners keep their car for 10 or more years
- Honda Accord: 17.7 percent
- Honda Civic: 17.1 percent
- Chevrolet Silverado 1500: 13.9 percent
- Nissan Altima: 13.3 percent
- Ram 1500: 11.5 percent
- Ford F-150: 11.0 percent
- Ford Explorer: 10.4 percent
- Jeep Grand Cherokee: 8.7 percent
- Ford Mustang: 7.9 percent
Trucks “may need to be replaced earlier” due to heavy mileage and high workloads, Ly said. At the bottom of the list were fleet-heavy cars like the Ford Taurus, as well as luxury cars popular as leases. Just 5.6 percent of Ford Taurus sedans — a rental-car staple in the 1990s and 2000s — stayed with original owners for 10 years or more. For the lease-heavy BMW 7 Series, it was just 4.0 percent.
