I stumbled upon this while researching cars prior to purchasing my car. I forgot that I bookmarked it and thought I would share.

Now the way he collected data is interesting as he looked at the cars towards the end of their lives and with the owner out of the picture as opposed to the early, user-generated (read sometimes biased) data often seen in consumer reports or JD Powers.

His methodology can be found in the second link, which is a rather interesting article in itself, while the Lexus results are found in the first.

http://longtermqualityindex.com/reports/Lexus.html

http://bestride.com/blog/long-term-q...ability/24162/

Here's a link to all of the data:

http://longtermqualityindex.com


It's not surprising that Lexus scored high based on our subjective and often anecdotal thoughts that they are reliable. The German brands are shown. In any case, enjoy!

 

Very interesting...thanks for sharing...

 

Thank you for posting this. I'm adding it to my favorites.

 

I love this quote from the article:

Or this one:

 

Very nice find. I am not surprised Toyota products rank high in satisfaction and performance. When I sold my 94 LS400 with 132K, it was just beginning to warm up. My friend who bought it put another 100K on it before he got rid of it. My LS430 had 75K when I traded it for the 460 and it felt like a brand new car. My 08 has only 58K and it's "Nothing but a Breeze".

 

The articles bring up some great points, take Honda for instance, it's been kind of glossed over, but they've had some serious issues over the last ten years. Honda had transmission problems...big problems...if you owned a Ridgline, Odyssey, Pilot Or Accord, you probably were putting a transmission in it. That's a big deal. And right now they are having engine problems (rings) with their Pilot, Odyssey, CRV and accords. That's a major black mark on their brand.

There's so many problems out there right now with so many different brands, I believe it has a lot to do with the new things manufactures are trying (direct injection and anything to improve fuel economy). Ford has some serious issues going on with 2.0 liter ecoboost engines. The carbon buildup is so bad that they are suggesting replacing the heads as a repair, imagine that? Just replace the damn heads, no biggie! And just about every manufacturer is having problems with oil consumption right now. Crazy.

 

http://longtermqualityindex.com/vehicles/Lexus_LS.html

wow does anybody have any explanation why the 2009 faired so bad compared to the other models? It is not only far more then other MY lexus, but also worse then the industry standard. Yep, i have a 2009 . but so far so good.

 

My guess is control arms...

 

Interesting comment. I've got a 2007 Ridgeline and was surprised by your transmission reliability comment. I just checked Consumer Reports again and found transmission reliability for the Ridgeline was excellent.

 

Hmm, interesting to see that the quality per model index favored the LX, GX and then after those was the LS, the supposed flagship. It would be interesting to see what parameters were built into the database of the rating or scoring. Maybe because the LS has more wooden pieces that aren't as easily perfected as all the other plastic decor found in the LG and GX.

 

Huh?!? Are you trying to say the LS has real wood trim and the LX and GX do not? Thats not the case...and even if it were that has nothing to do with long term quality or reliability.

Doesn't surprise me the LX and GX are the top of the range, they're the very reliable world vehicles the Land Cruiser and Land Cruiser Prado.

 

Agree with the Honda transmission commments. They've been almost as bad as Dodge. My Acura EL 1.7(basically a Civic) has had transmission problems and now needs a replacement.

I just Googled "Honda RIdgeline transmission problems" and there's definately an issue.

 

I was talking to long time acquaintance of mine tonight about my Ls460 purchase. He blew my mind with his RX story. He said he has had 3, 2 newer ones now and the previous 1999. He drove the 99 450k miles, he drives a lot for work. 1 1/2 years in at 125k the engine seized. They had a oil jelling issue. Lexus didn't even know about this yet. They turned him down for goodwill even with all oil change records. He towed it out of there and had a used engine put in for 8k at a shop including rental car for weeks. 2 years later he gets a form notice letter from Lexus about this problem. He calls them and says wtf pay me 8k. They said sent the receipts. Boom, they send him a check for 8k. Lexus steps up. Mercedes fights you till a class action law suit forces their minimal participation 9 years later. Read about Mercedes balance shaft issue.
So in 450,000 miles he said that and 2 sets of struts, normal brakes and maintenance is all he did. Original tranny never missed a lick. Nothing else wore out. I'm sure he's forgetting a couple but wow. My LS400 wasn't even close to that kind of miracle and that was only 200k.

 

And BMW is even worse. Engine carbon build up, Air pump failures, valve guid failures, coolant pipe failures, etc etc. NONE of which was ever addressed or acknowledged by BMW. There's some great videos on youtube and news sources of frustrated owners. One guy in Germany (I believe), drives his 7 series up to the BMW head office, and proceeds to hammer the *&^% out of his near new car with a sledgehammer while the media gleefully looked on. Another is a limousine company in Australia that drove it's fleet of 7 series cars to the BMW headquarters and abandoned them there after BMW refused to acknowledge electrical issues that rendered the fleet useless.

 

Yeah, the individual model-year data is interesting. This guy said he is going to continually update so it might be worth bookmarking his data set.

It's easy to draw broad generalizations (by category and manufacturer) and also drill down and see model-year differences.

Yeah Hondas make or made notoriously bad transmissions. I had an Acura for a decade and spent a lot of time reading about them. I think they've definitely improved, but there was a time where they made a lot of junk and didn't last 100k miles. In fact, my Acura started to have some bearing whine at just over 100k and one of the reasons I traded it in. It was perfect car and gave me no trouble and shifted just fine, but that periodic bearing whine in the transmission gave me pause.

One thing, though, I'm sure there are late-model Mercedes that have driven 200k miles without an issue, while there might be a Lexus that hasn't gone 100k without something major breaking. But, what this data shows is that the chances, the odds, the probability of such isn't in your favor for those two things happening, which is bad for the Mercedes and good for us.