Whose Cars are Most Dependable?

To me dependability and quality in an automobile are two very different things.

Dependability is strictly a matter of will the vehicle do the job it's supposed to when needed and at the very top of the list of non-dependability is leaving me at the side of the road with no recourse except to seek outside help.

Quality, on the other hand has many more facets and nuances.

From the dependability standpoint Toyotas (2 of our ten everyday drivers over the last 46 years of our marriage) have been the worst totalling 5 out of 9 tow events. Not that they don't have admirable attributes in the total quality picture, but I rate the ability of a vehicle to go from point A to point B without breaking down as the principal performance required from any car/truck. Further it is worth noting that both the Toyotas, one of which I still have only reached 110,000 miles on the odometer, Number of tows were as follows:

Fort T-bird 90K; 41 Ford pickup 75K, two tows; 56VW Beetle, 200K, Plymouth Valiant 264K, 72 Ford Pinto 2000, 210K; 80 Mazda GLC, 95K, one tow; 86 Toyota Camry, 110K, 4 tows; Mitsubishi Dodge Ram 50, one tow, 120K; Lexus ES300 22K; Toyota Tacoma 110K, one tow.

This is not a reflection of the number of times repairs were needed on the vehicles. Just the number of times they left me sitting by the side of a road needing repairs I couldn't do in a reasonable amount of time rather than in my own driveway where work could be done and home was right there for comfort.

Ed Weldon

That 1986 Toyota Camry lemon is apparently an outlier that has skewed the statistics. (In 40 years I've never had a mechanical problem requiring towing, but I did screw up once by slipping off a soft shoulder; so I don't have a straight-across comparison.)

I've owned about 30 cars and trucks ranging from 1952 to 2003 models, both foreign and domestic. The only times I was left on the side of the road was when I had a flat, crashed or ran out of gas. A few times I needed to be towed because of my own negligence; I ran out of oil and blew the engine. The earlier cars didn't last as long , but I never really had a problem with dependability. Wait, The 1952 MG was one that was undependable.

1989 Honda Prelude SI.

Drove it for 14 yrs. Towed once (illegally parked, honest I didn't see the sign)

anything made by the japanese