The data is good. I have been in the auto repair industry (in various forms)for a long time and can attest that the results are correct.
Take the section "Brands most likely not to start", and you see Mercury at the top. Strange, they only have a couple of models I wonder which it is? So you look at the section "Models most likely not to start", and no Mercury model is even listed. Instead Hyundai is at the top and it wasn't even on the first chart.
They seem to really love throwing Mercury under the bus with comments about how the company closed doors (had nothing to do with reliability, people today just don't want 20mpg vehicles) and never mind the several million mercury taxi cabs. And at least with the Grand Marquis, it is nearly bullet proof. Its design has changed very little over the last 20 years and the 4.6L engine will run 400k miles as long as you change the oil. And when something does go wrong, most parts are cheap and easy to replace.
And the "Brands that cost the most to maintain" section can be deceiving. For instance Honda is at the bottom making it sound like a good deal. Yet most all Hondas (and most Asian cars) use a timing belt instead of a chain: http://yourcarangel.com/2015/06/honda-timing-belt-timing-cha... That has to be changed every 50K miles because the risk of it snapping is much higher after that. And if it does snap, you could very well be looking at needing a new top half of your motor. I refuse to buy any car that has a belt instead of a chain. The only advantage is it saves some noise and a little bit of gas. But the disadvantages far out way that.
The transmission is on me. I drove it like I stole it for ten years before I needed one. It's an essentially underpowered truck but it goes like stink off the line. I was in the traffic hell that was Dallas.
I bought , of course, another Frontier. It has two or three disappointments ( no torque in top gear @ 55 MPH ( so push the overdrive disable, duh!) ; a bad tint job; mileage not correlated with ... activity ).
I expect it to outlast me. I think I'd have to go with a Cadillac type car to find something more comfortable on the freeway ( but it's not quiet by any stretch).
In that span, we probably went through three (really two) cars for my wife. She's settled on a '03 Ford Escape which seems to avoid the reaper so far. But it's needed expensive repairs. We love it anyway, even though it tried to kill me one time ( a piece of plastic in the inexplicably convoluted throttle arrangement broke, and the throttle body went wide open. No problem; I managed to use neutral and the key switch to get it safely grounded before calling a tow truck. But geez, Ford... four throttle cables ?)
The escape issues with the cable is widely know. I avoid them.
I looked into superchargers, seems like it's cheaper to buy a bigger crate engine and slap it in? And since you know:) Which 302 headers should I buy?
Can't recommend headers without knowing more. Feel free to email me to avoid cluttering the thread (and get down voted to hell).
My ford origins are showing. :)
Anyway, I also wonder if people who prefer certain makes or models are more likely to do their own work, also skewing their reliability data.
Land Rover. Notoriously bad dealerships, also very expensive (dubbed 'stealerships' on LR forums). Masses of electronics including air suspension in the 90s when it was not common on European cars leading to all sorts o f problems down the line.
And most owners buy them with the intention of maintaining them themselves.
A 3rd party garage won't ever see them either, because so much of the car can only be worked on by LR. My local garage turned me away in spring!
But one thing is that the parts of the hybrid system are different than normal gas cars. The transmission is probably different, and the gas engines are smaller. So most independent shops don't really have experience working on those hybrid-specific parts.
Another thing is that the HV batteries don't last forever, and are expensive to replace. And the warranties don't always cover the average life of a battery.
The third thing is that hybrid battery is high voltage. So most shops won't want to do any repairs that will touch the HV electrical system.
You can find independent mechanics that work on hybrids, hybrid car repair just require a little more specialization than other cars.
Owned and operated various auto repair shops. Including on site repairs similar to YM.
Worked as an auto technician across brands.
Have a degree in auto repair.
Worked as a shop manager at a national repair shop.
Worked in commercial, retail and wholesale auto parts sales.
In all I have about 20 years of experience. Without mentioning my experience modifying and tuning cars because its not relevant.
“In order to estimate annual maintenance costs, we found the amount spent on every two oil changes (as oil changes are generally done every six months).”
The oil change interval on a BMW 328i (F30, the current model) is 10000 miles or 1 year, whichever comes first. For the model from ten years ago (E90), it's as indicated by the engine (with a starting interval of 30000 km, ~18000 miles) or every two years[0]. Hence, the total cost for oil changes will be a lot lower than estimated, and the actual repairs needed in that interval do not make up for that.
[0] http://workshop-manuals.com/bmw/3_series_e90/328i_n51_sal/1_...