The New Hoopty

Looking to buy a car? Wondering what to buy? Well, is this blog post for you!

Everyday, multiple times a day, people ask us what kind of car they should buy. In the past we didn't get asked this question nearly as often, and that’s because the market didn’t used to be the financial minefield that it is today. This is because over the last decade, the complexity of all systems, in all cars, has been going up dramatically.  This increased complexity has played a major role in making cars much more expensive, and more expensive to repair. So buying a car that stays out of the shop has never been more important. Before we go any further we need to address 3 things about your source of information here:

1: We’re ONLY considering reliability.  We like cars that don’t break often. Period. How comfortable the seats are, infotainment features, how much it can tow, etc, are not part of this conversation.

2. We’re cynical.  Years of working on these things has a way of doing that. We only see broken cars, this is where they come to die. Somewhere out there could be a Chevy Cruze with 200,000 miles on it that only ever needed its oil changed. I mean, I’ve never seen it, and it seems VERY UNLIKELY,  but maybe they got the one that was built on a Wednesday when everyone showed up to work sober, and all the plastic parts were forged extra strong!

OK, let’s do this!

We’ll start with the short answer for everyone that could care less about details.

Toyota.

Small car? Corolla. 

Sedan? Camry. 

Truck? Tundra. 

SUV/Crossover? RAV4 

And if you want to get fancy? Lexus

Ok now the long reason why;

Since the 80’s Toyota has pretty much been mopping the floor with every other manufacturer when it comes to reliability. Now, (AND THIS IS IMPORTANT!) does that mean the new models will continue this trend? NO. ALL manufactures are stretching fuel efficiency as far as they can in order to meet EPA CAFE standards, and it is not going well. Direct injection, cylinder deactivation, 9 and 10 speed transmissions, Belt style CVT transmissions, engine start/stop, and a bunch of other tech, geared to increase fuel efficiency, are creating very expensive problems, often before 100,000 miles. And that’s just the drivetrain tech. Don’t get me started on the ADAS stuff. I mean, if you knock a mirror off of your car these days you’re out an easy $1,000.

This is probably a good time to point something out. We don’t really see cars until they’re out of their warranty. So we don’t really get a good data sample for the first 5 or 6 years. For example, we’ve been telling people for years Toyota Tundras are immortal. So, if you took our advice 5 years ago and bought a brand new Tundra with the new twin turbo V6 (CAFE/Emissions standards)…well, you’ve probably already had your engine replaced and have been cussing me out ever since. Sorry. But, aside from that pretty major issue (Which was covered under warranty I should add, Toyota and Honda tend to step up and do the right thing more often than most), they’re still breaking the least. They’re breaking more than they ever have, it’s just that everyone else is breaking even more….wow that is bleak. Toyota has also done the best job implementing this new tech. I also think their focus on hybrids was the smarter approach.  You can meet standards way easier with a hybrid and they’ve proven to be more robust than most of the other things that are being tried.

“But I like/want X” oops, you’ve stepped out of the bounds of this conversation. 

By all means get whatever you want.  Enjoy your Wrangler/Bronco/Yukon Denali/Telluride! But if it’s not a Toyota, just know that you are trading a degree of reliability for X.

So anyway, if you’re walking through a minefield but you can see the mines, we suggest you step on the one that is most likely to only take off a few toes.