My current car was well-reviewed when new but had a cosmically stupid timing chain design that screws over the second or third owner. But most reviewers are targeting new-car buyers.
Thinking about that made me wonder if there are channels/creators specializing in reviews of cars that have significant mileage on them. Looking at relatively recent cars and asking “how did this model actually hold up? What design flaws should second-hand buyers watch out for?”
RCR kind of ends up doing that sometimes, but it’s not really their specific focus.
Thanks!
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Alex on Autos (aka Auto Buyers Guide) has had a few long termers, but not huge.
At least form what I can recall –
- 2nd gen Kia Soul EV
- Mustang Mach E
- Kia EV 6
- Tesla Model 3 Standard Range
- Rav4 Prime
- Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (their current long term).
In terms of an actual good review of long-time ownership you’re better off reading owner groups like forums/subreddits etc. Some reviewers will revisit long running models but it usually gets less attention. If you want a view into long-term ownership you have to get it from someone who’s owned it long-term
I think there’s useful information to be gleaned from owner groups and forums. But I also think a person needs to be careful.
Ownership bias is very real. And I think you tend to actually get more of the extremes. i.e. people who are there to go on about how much they just love their vehicle. Or conversely just how much their experience was the worst ever.
Likewise… the vast majority of people don’t have any significant time with comparable models.
You gotta look into maintenance threads and buyers guides. Less opinion pieces and more gleaning from what people are dealing with. Anyone’s gonna try to sell you if you ask for an opinion.
Look through an e46 forum everyone will tell you they’re reliable if you replace every piece of rubber and plastic every 5 years. Which is partially true but that’s a ton of maintenance itself. You’ll know you’ll be dealing with cooling issues, and there’s a million threads on subframe issues etc.
The biggest problem with that approach is that people who have had major issues and dissatisfaction probably don’t own the vehicle anymore and thus won’t be found in these groups. I don’t disagree it’s a good place to get feedback, but just be aware of the inherent survivorship bias.
It seems like for every honest person you get on a forum, you get 10 “best car I ever had, never had any problems and I put 500k on it”.
And for everyone of of those you get a “I’VE HAD NO ISSUES WHATSOEVER. 17,000 MILES ON THE ODOMETER.” Like yeah. It’s not supposed to have any problems at 17,000 miles, even for a poopsmear brand like Jaguar or Alfa.
Forums are just a data point among many. You need to sift through all the garbage and see what passes the sniff test.
My favorite is “just passed the 6 month mark! Still running great and looks new!”
"Just brought her home! Can’t wait to live my best life dailying this beauty!
PS: Will someone explain how to shift this thing?
Anyway, five stars for sure!
Every cars I’ve owned the past 30 years have all had strong forum (now reddit) communities. These have people/groups are a treasure trove of information and sadly older indexable/searchable formats are getting less frequented (old school forums), for non searchable formats such as tic tok and you tube.
Meh, I find forums are still pretty honest that way.
This. Forums are the best. The issue is, if the car doesn’t have an enthusiast following, info is non-existent.
I feel like the bias can also go the other way. People who’ve had a bad experience are more likely to complain on the forums and if it ain’t broke people aren’t posting about it.
Forum posters are already an extreme minority.
Consumer Reports updates their reliability ratings as cars age and their users report issues.
Consumer reports is terrible
How so?
Well, they were recommending the LG refrigerators as a good buy while LG was involved in a class action lawsuit for faulty refrigerator compressors.
They have given the same products made by the same manufacturer, but sold under different brands different ratings.
If what you consider important in a product isn’t what they consider important, then their recommendation may not be for you.
They also tend to favor appliances with a lot of “smart features” and rate them highly, even when they don’t actually do a good job at what they are supposed to do. As long as the smart features are easy to use, it seems to get a good rating.
I hear all that. What do you think about their takes on cars?
They have given the same products made by the same manufacturer, but sold under different brands different ratings.
This was the flag to me the CR was either complete BS or at least should be taken with a grain of salt. Something like an 86 can get a different score than a BRZ despite being 99% there same car. That or a new MY that’s just a light exterior refresh suddenly getting better marks despite no drivetrain changes.
It was an old snow blower review that I first noticed the discrepancy. They scored the MTF higher than the Craftsman, despite the only difference being one was yellow and the other red. I worked in a repair shop at the same time. The parts list was the same and they had the same part numbers and same engine, same warranty. They were 100% the same machine, yet one was ranked higher than the other.
A other one they recommended was complete garbage. It had a carburetor you couldn’t order parts for. The manual recommended an engine sway over a carb rebuild. At that point it was cheaper just to replace the snowblower entirely.
Most channels are limited by how much they can spend on cars long term. Throttle House and Everyday Driver come to mind for some longer term ownership reviews. Specific to Porsche incl. air cooled 911s you want to check out Rennenthusiast. Cars With Luke does modern Porsches but not sure he puts enough miles on them, currently has a GT4RS, previously a GT3 that he didn’t keep very long and a 718 GT4 before that.
Just look up reviews until you find some channel that features a make model you’re interested in, usually there’s some interesting content out there.
Luke just got rid of his GT4RS because it was too loud so he got a 991.2 GT3RS I believe.
I haven’t seen any channels dedicated to that concept but I have seen individual owners reviewing their own cars as they age. There’s plenty of that around YT
JayEm does review older cars. He does speak briefly about the ownership and potential costs. But probably not enough to satisfy your needs
He does have some very good videos on his purchases which seem to be very good imo
If I am interested in a car I usually Google make/model/year common problems. Then there is some checking in forums and common issues.
Savagegeese has a handful of “living with this car long term” videos for popular cars that I find pretty informative
+1 on Savage Geese. Some of the cars they’ve (individually) owned:
- LC500
- S2000
- Civic Type R
- Corolla GR
- XC90
- Rav 4
Probably missing a few.
MDX Type S
I think Mark has a X7 now. They’ve also said some things about towing with various trucks. The Tundra comes to mind too.
Car and Driver does them but obviously no major car media outlet can run many long-term tests in parallel at any one time.
It’s wild how far I had to scroll for Car and Driver, this has been a thing they’ve done for decades.
And they are fucking savage on cars.
If they say they didn’t have any problems on 40k, it will last a normal person who cares and had to pay for their car a good bit longer.
And I’ve found that they’re very honest with the long term reviews.
I specifically remember the long term test of the Giulia QF. As they put more miles on it (and it spent more and more time in the shop) their opinion slowly went from “this is one of the best cars we’ve ever driven” to “this is one of the best cars we’ve ever driven, but it’s so terribly unreliable that no one should buy or even lease it”.
Brazilian car magazines like Quatrorodas used to rotate long term review cars every few months between employees of sister magazines.
This had the extra advantage that most were not gearheads, and instead valued reliability and practicality.
Hearst and Axel Soringer could certainly do that if they wished.
Hoovie and the Car Wizard
Savagegeese has a few like that, but they are definitely in the minority. I think most recently they’ve had a GR Corolla, Civic Type R, MDX Type S, GR 86, and Mazda 3 hatch long term reviews that talked about the ownership experiences.
Harry’s garage
Was about to post this. Harry does long and very long term reviews occasionally but he typically doesn’t cover cars that the average American car enthusiast would care about
Well the simple fact is that you can’t assess long term reliability on a new car. That requires many data points on many high mile cars to be able to see trends.
What you can do is look at brand reputation and what parts are carried over. If the car is new, but the drivetrain is a known quantity proven to be reliable in other models then you can generally assume that the drivetrain will maintain its reliability.
It is fundamentally and literally impossible for a single creator to do multiple concurrent long term reviews. You have to rely on different owners for different cars you are interested in, and in the case of Youtube, that is not too difficult since you can search the model and ‘long term review’ to find a lot of amateurs giving their input. But as others have said, this is one of those topics that online forums do a better job.
Motorweek has a long term update I think