Slightly off topic, but this article confirms the reliability and engineering feat of Toyota, along with my experience as a car owner for the past 30 years. I currently own Toyota Prius (ranked #1 in lowest maintenance cost) with 200k miles and I cannot believe how reliable this car is. Had I known this, I would've had bought only Toyota in the past, but I had only learned my lesson in the most painful way. I've had Mercury, which confirms extremely high maintenance (ranked 7th in the list) and Infiniti (ranked 12th), which seems about right, as well as Mazdas, etc. I still have nightmares thinking about what I went through with those other cars. Scotty Kilmer, a popular automechanic Youtuber, also confirms that Toyota is the most reliable car that he has ever owned or worked with. Not all Japanese car manufacturers are the same. Nissan and Honda are not even in the same league as Toyota. I hope that Toyota creates all-electric Prius someday.

Here's a UK survey from 2015 of 50,000 motorists with remarkably similar results. To sum up: Japanese cars were the most reliable and dependable. And the cheapest to repair.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32332210

I'm glad you posted this. The thread is mostly full of anecdotal claims, which makes sense since few people clock enough time in enough cars in a lifetime to claim statistical significance. However if we're talking about maintenance costs, it's really about average value and standard deviation.

That website urgently needs to add error estimates on these numbers. It might also be interesting to look at repair cost relative to car cost.