Want the Most Reliable, Safe, Cost-Effective Car? Get One of These.

So, you are ready to buy a car.  That’s great.  You know what you need?

A list of the world’s most reliable, safe, cost-effective, and well-regarded cars.

Does such a list exist, you ask?  Why yes, yes it does.  I’ve put together an extensive list of only the most reliable cars in the United States.  I then included data on safety, cost to own, cost to purchase, cost to fuel, and critical reception.  The data was pulled from six different websites (truedelta.com, nhtsa.gov, kbb.com, edmunds.com, fueleconomy.gov, and usnews.com).  I then (1) consolidated some scores where doing so made sense, (2) made some adjustments for oddities in the data, (3) ranked the entire data set using a modified Wilcoxon method (which allowed me to compare cars across metrics), and (4) coded a system that weights the ranks depending on how you preference a certain metric (which allows me to preference safety over cost for example, and see which cars rank better).  The final product contains over 3,720 data points.

But enough of that, let’s look at the results!

Cheapest to Purchase

You can buy cheaper cars, but none of them will be as reliable as these inexpensive cars.  If you need to get into a car and have very little money up front, stick with one of these.  If you are looking for the most cost-effective option, look at the next list.

Most Cost Effective

Edmunds.com has a metric they call the “True Cost to Own.”  This metric evaluates the following metrics: Depreciation, Insurance, Financing, Taxes and Fees, Fuel, Maintenance, Repairs, and Federal Tax Credits.  Combined with the Kelley Blue Book Purchase Price, these two metrics give us a great idea of the cheapest cars to own overall.  If you want to reduce car expenses to the greatest possible degree, snag one of these cars.

Safest

If you value safety highly, these are the cars for you.  It may make sense to splurge on a remarkably safe car if you drive a ton, find yourself around crazy drivers a lot, are a crazy driver yourself, or drive other people around frequently.

Most Well Received by Critics

The Critical Reception score evaluates metrics that I don’t include elsewhere in the data.  It pulls only a portion of the available scores on US News reports – specifically the Critics’ Rating, Performance, and Interior Score – and averages them out for an overall critical reception score.  My goal is to reduce the “wow, this is a nice car” feel down to a simple comparable metric.  However, you’ll notice the Honda Fit is #1, which makes little sense when you compare that to the Acura, Lexus, or Porsche.  The Honda Fit benefits from a remarkably high “Critics’ Rating” of 9.8 – almost perfect!  Presumably this is because the Fit is an almost perfect subcompact, low cost car, while the Porsche Boxster, in the eyes of the critics, either has stiffer competition or a little more room to grow.

Most Reliable

Reliability is a big deal.  Not only is it expensive to repair cars, repairs eat up a lot of time: take the car in, wait around, maybe secure alternative transportation, etc.  Even worse, an unreliable care can mean missed meetings and obligations.  If your schedule is very sensitive, or you bill a lot of money per hour, having the most reliable car around may make the most sense, because for some people, time can be a lot of money.

Overall Best

Finally, this is a list of cars with the best broad performance across all metrics.  I equally ranked all metrics besides Annual Fuel Cost (since this is already represented in the True Cost to Own metric).  If all you want is a rock-solid car on every category, get one of these.

Thoughts

That’s it!  I anticipate updating this list periodically.  I may also embed the entire data set into the website so you can play around with the weight and rankings yourself if you are interested.

If you have any thoughts, or would like to see additional data included in an updated list, let me know!  I’ll see what I can do.

Thanks for reading

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