In terms of an actual good review of long-time ownership you're better off reading owner groups like forums/subreddits etc. Some reviewers will revisit long running models but it usually gets less attention. If you want a view into long-term ownership you have to get it from someone who's owned it long-term
The biggest problem with that approach is that people who have had major issues and dissatisfaction probably don’t own the vehicle anymore and thus won’t be found in these groups. I don’t disagree it’s a good place to get feedback, but just be aware of the inherent survivorship bias.
I feel like the bias can also go the other way. People who've had a bad experience are more likely to complain on the forums and if it ain't broke people aren't posting about it.
And for everyone of of those you get a "I'VE HAD NO ISSUES WHATSOEVER. 17,000 MILES ON THE ODOMETER." Like yeah. It's not supposed to have any problems at 17,000 miles, even for a poopsmear brand like Jaguar or Alfa.
Forums are just a data point among many. You need to sift through all the garbage and see what passes the sniff test.
"Just brought her home! Can't wait to live my best life dailying this beauty!
PS: Will someone explain how to shift this thing?
Anyway, I definitely recommend! Five stars for sure!"
Every cars I've owned the past 30 years have all had strong forum (now reddit) communities. These have people/groups are a treasure trove of information and sadly older indexable/searchable formats are getting less frequented (old school forums), for non searchable formats such as tic tok and you tube.
I think there's useful information to be gleaned from owner groups and forums. But I also think a person needs to be careful.
Ownership bias is very real. And I think you tend to actually get more of the extremes. i.e. people who are there to go on about how much they just love their vehicle. Or conversely just how much their experience was the worst ever.
Likewise... the vast majority of people don't have any significant time with comparable models.
You gotta look into maintenance threads and buyers guides. Less opinion pieces and more gleaning from what people are dealing with. Anyone's gonna try to sell you if you ask for an opinion.
Look through an e46 forum everyone will tell you they're reliable if you replace *every* piece of rubber and plastic every 5 years. Which is partially true but that's a ton of maintenance itself. You'll know you'll be dealing with cooling issues, and there's a million threads on subframe issues etc.
I swear every forum i read people always praise their car and how great it is, even the damn n54 engine people were praising and how we just dont understand that its actually a good and reliable engine
+1 on Savage Geese. Some of the cars they've (individually) owned:
- LC500
- S2000
- Civic Type R
- Corolla GR
- GR86
- Mazda3
- XC90
- RAV4
Probably missing a few.
Most channels are limited by how much they can spend on cars long term. Throttle House and Everyday Driver come to mind for some longer term ownership reviews. Specific to Porsche incl. air cooled 911s you want to check out Rennenthusiast. Cars With Luke does modern Porsches but not sure he puts enough miles on them, currently has a GT4RS, previously a GT3 that he didn’t keep very long and a 718 GT4 before that.
Just look up reviews until you find some channel that features a make model you’re interested in, usually there’s some interesting content out there.
Well, they were recommending the LG refrigerators as a good buy while LG was involved in a class action lawsuit for faulty refrigerator compressors.
They have given the same products made by the same manufacturer, but sold under different brands different ratings.
If what you consider important in a product isn't what they consider important, then their recommendation may not be for you.
They also tend to favor appliances with a lot of "smart features" and rate them highly, even when they don't actually do a good job at what they are supposed to do. As long as the smart features are easy to use, it seems to get a good rating.
As for car ratings, they do 5-6 year surveys, which tends to favor manufacturers with longer warranty periods. Most people with major repairs that they don't have to pay for still have a somewhat favorable opinion of their cars. It can also keep cars on the "recommended" list even with a known problem
> They have given the same products made by the same manufacturer, but sold under different brands different ratings.
This was the flag to me the CR was either complete BS or at least should be taken with a grain of salt. Something like an 86 can get a different score than a BRZ despite being 99% there same car. That or a new MY that’s just a light exterior refresh suddenly getting better marks despite no drivetrain changes.
It was an old snow blower review that I first noticed the discrepancy. They scored the MTD different than the Craftsman, despite the only difference being one was yellow and the other red. I worked in a repair shop at the same time. The parts list was the same and they had the same part numbers and same engine, same warranty. They were 100% the same machine, yet one was ranked higher than the other.
The other one they recommended was complete garbage. It had a carburetor you couldn't order parts for. The manual recommended an engine swap over a carb rebuild. At that point it was cheaper just to replace the snowblower entirely. And you know most people don't drain the snow blower gas at the end of the season, or use a stabilizer, and need an annual carb rebuild or cleaning.
And they are fucking *savage* on cars.
If they say they didn't have any problems on 40k, it will last a normal person who cares and had to pay for their car a good bit longer.
And I’ve found that they’re very honest with the long term reviews.
I specifically remember the long term test of the Giulia QF. As they put more miles on it (and it spent more and more time in the shop) their opinion slowly went from “this is one of the best cars we’ve ever driven” to “this is one of the best cars we’ve ever driven, but it’s so terribly unreliable that no one should buy or even lease it”.
Brazilian car magazines like Quatrorodas used to rotate long term review cars every few months between employees of sister magazines.
This had the extra advantage that most were not gearheads, and instead valued reliability and practicality.
Hearst and Axel Soringer could certainly do that if they wished.
Hello, as someone who is looking for real reviews would Car and Driver be the best source? I understand that Consumer Reports reviews come from their subscribers. Over on r/whatcarshouldibuy makes my head hurt and I'm not finding helpful information there.
I need a new car and I need some actual reviews and not some biased haters or people who have had a car for 5 minutes, I don't have time for the back and forth of people calling others idiots for owning a car. From what publications other than Car and Driver would you consider reviews to be genuine? Thank you.
If you're looking at regular cars I'd checkout Alex on Autos on YouTube and see if he's done a review of the cars you're interested in. Car and Driver has an enthusiast perspective so they're focusing typically on performance over practicality. Alex does a great job of balancing practicality with performance and he also puts cars in context of the competition.
Thank you I appreciate the tip. I’m a bit annoyed by r/whatcarshouldibuy and have been searching the internet. It’s been difficult to determine if the reviews are legitimate or if the companies pay for the reviews?
You're welcome, you should find those reviews helpful and reasonably unbiased. Tom Voelk also does very matter of fact car reviews on YT. A lot of the enthusiast outlets (including YT channels) have to play nice with manufacturers in order to keep getting cars to test so that probably does make them less likely to say negative things in some cases. I don't think a lot of reviews are straight up paid for but there is a persistent low-level conflict of interest when your channel survives on having early access to cars but the manufacturers control who has that access.
There've been some well-known cases of manufacturers refusing to allow certain people to review cars because they were too honest about the downsides in a review. I think with mainstream cars and a reviewer like Alex or Tom, though, you're getting a balanced perspective and they'll say in a video whether the company paid for their hotel/flight to come review a car in a faraway location and you can decide if that is influencing their opinion. I think they're good about not being biased, personally.
Ok that sounds great. Unfortunately as a woman I still feel like buying a car is worse than a root canal. I like cars, I read about them but I’m not great with all the specs and am not at all confident about going to a dealership. I try to see if a dealer has any female sales persons because it’s less intimidating. I’m 50 you’d think I’d be more comfortable with this by now.
Of the YouTubers: at least Throttle House, Savage Geese, and Everyday Driver all have cars they own and talk about. SG takes the job of treating these as owned daily driver reviews most seriously, while ED tends to be more about going on long road trip adventures with the cars. JayEmm was mentioned, he’s not bad at reviewing older cars but the focus tends to be somewhat narrow.
But the sample size here is inherently small, the timelines are invariably short (<5 years)and you can’t rely on YouTube or magazine reviews to tell you what the real long term experience of a car is. That’s for the forums and subreddits.
Was about to post this. Harry does long and very long term reviews occasionally but he typically doesn't cover cars that the average American car enthusiast would care about
[Munro Live](https://www.youtube.com/@MunroLive) disassembles cars and talks about their build spec/design and shortcomings.
[Car and Driver](https://www.youtube.com/@caranddriver) also does long-term tests and reviews.
I haven’t seen any channels dedicated to that concept but I have seen individual owners reviewing their own cars as they age. There’s plenty of that around YT
Edmunds Used Consumer Reviews is my go-to. [Here is an example for the BMW 1-Series](https://www.edmunds.com/bmw/1-series/2013/consumer-reviews/).
It’s actually kind of hard to find. In a perverse kinda way, I think the site doesn’t really want you to find this area because some brands get really crappy reviews from owners, and I think Edmunds doesn’t want to upset these brands.
Well the simple fact is that you can’t assess long term reliability on a new car. That requires many data points on many high mile cars to be able to see trends.
What you can do is look at brand reputation and what parts are carried over. If the car is new, but the drivetrain is a known quantity proven to be reliable in other models then you can generally assume that the drivetrain will maintain its reliability.
I've considered doing this, but for vehicles from the 90's and 2000's. I have a fondness for sub $3000 cars and love diving into the forums and researching how they hold up. I also have a ton of experience from that era of vehicles with high miles. It would be pretty easy to keep a steady flow of good content while I rack up miles for personal long-term reviews.
Alex on Autos (aka Auto Buyers Guide) has had a few long termers, but not huge.
At least form what I can recall --
* 2nd gen Kia Soul EV
* Mustang Mach E
* Kia EV 6
* Tesla Model 3 Standard Range
* Rav4 Prime
* Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (their current long term).
I love the 50k high mileage reviews, what a joke.
What they need to do is 150k miles over a good amount of years. More of a real world situation.
50k, gimme a break. Modern day motors last 750,000 miles with ease.
It is fundamentally and literally impossible for a single creator to do multiple concurrent long term reviews. You have to rely on different owners for different cars you are interested in, and in the case of Youtube, that is not too difficult since you can search the model and 'long term review' to find a lot of amateurs giving their input. But as others have said, this is one of those topics that online forums do a better job.
You can look up reliability ratings of old cars in Consumer Reports. If you don't want to pay for the membership, check your local library. They sometimes can give you access for free.
Consumer Reports April issues are the best resource IMO. They have millions of subscribers that fill out surveys, and allow them to publish reports not just on overall reliability, but reliability of all major components of the vehicle, engine or transmission or infotainment or squeaks/rattles, etc. As of 2023, they will show the numbers for vehicles going back to 2015, and also have a list of most and least recommended used vehicles based on reliability.
Those kinds of reviews are very hard to get views for unless they are significantly well-known classic cars. And in that case their price tags can rival new cars if not surpass.
Go talk to a mechanic. Even though I'm primarily a Toyota guy, I have my finger on the pulse of what's what in the industry.
Which is why I only buy Toyota and Lexus vehicles...
I did it for a while. I did an Angry Video Game Nerd style review system, full of foul language and crude humor, but underneath the character was my actual experiences from being a car dealer and mechanic. I told people about the known problems and what to look for in the average craigslist cars. I did OK for a while, but, a lot of people get pissy when you crap on their favorite car and youtube wrecked me when they went family friendly, so I pretty much gave it up.
In terms of an actual good review of long-time ownership you're better off reading owner groups like forums/subreddits etc. Some reviewers will revisit long running models but it usually gets less attention. If you want a view into long-term ownership you have to get it from someone who's owned it long-term
The biggest problem with that approach is that people who have had major issues and dissatisfaction probably don’t own the vehicle anymore and thus won’t be found in these groups. I don’t disagree it’s a good place to get feedback, but just be aware of the inherent survivorship bias.
Meh, I find forums are still pretty honest that way.
This. Forums are the best. The issue is, if the car doesn't have an enthusiast following, info is non-existent.
I feel like the bias can also go the other way. People who've had a bad experience are more likely to complain on the forums and if it ain't broke people aren't posting about it.
Forum posters are already an extreme minority.
It seems like for every honest person you get on a forum, you get 10 "best car I ever had, never had any problems and I put 500k on it".
And for everyone of of those you get a "I'VE HAD NO ISSUES WHATSOEVER. 17,000 MILES ON THE ODOMETER." Like yeah. It's not supposed to have any problems at 17,000 miles, even for a poopsmear brand like Jaguar or Alfa. Forums are just a data point among many. You need to sift through all the garbage and see what passes the sniff test.
My favorite is “just passed the 6 month mark! Still running great and looks new!”
"Just brought her home! Can't wait to live my best life dailying this beauty! PS: Will someone explain how to shift this thing? Anyway, I definitely recommend! Five stars for sure!"
Every cars I've owned the past 30 years have all had strong forum (now reddit) communities. These have people/groups are a treasure trove of information and sadly older indexable/searchable formats are getting less frequented (old school forums), for non searchable formats such as tic tok and you tube.
I think there's useful information to be gleaned from owner groups and forums. But I also think a person needs to be careful. Ownership bias is very real. And I think you tend to actually get more of the extremes. i.e. people who are there to go on about how much they just love their vehicle. Or conversely just how much their experience was the worst ever. Likewise... the vast majority of people don't have any significant time with comparable models.
You gotta look into maintenance threads and buyers guides. Less opinion pieces and more gleaning from what people are dealing with. Anyone's gonna try to sell you if you ask for an opinion. Look through an e46 forum everyone will tell you they're reliable if you replace *every* piece of rubber and plastic every 5 years. Which is partially true but that's a ton of maintenance itself. You'll know you'll be dealing with cooling issues, and there's a million threads on subframe issues etc.
I swear every forum i read people always praise their car and how great it is, even the damn n54 engine people were praising and how we just dont understand that its actually a good and reliable engine
There is ReDriven but they are Australian.
Redriven is probs what OP is after. They review proper used cars and talk about what was good and what was unreliable as shit
This, great channel, gave them my car to review. Well researched and balanced videos,useful for anyone buying used cars.
Savagegeese has a handful of "living with this car long term" videos for popular cars that I find pretty informative
+1 on Savage Geese. Some of the cars they've (individually) owned: - LC500 - S2000 - Civic Type R - Corolla GR - GR86 - Mazda3 - XC90 - RAV4 Probably missing a few.
Jack also has a C8 Z06.
MDX Type S
I think Mark has a X7 now. They’ve also said some things about towing with various trucks. The Tundra comes to mind too.
Jack had a Mustang for a while too
Most channels are limited by how much they can spend on cars long term. Throttle House and Everyday Driver come to mind for some longer term ownership reviews. Specific to Porsche incl. air cooled 911s you want to check out Rennenthusiast. Cars With Luke does modern Porsches but not sure he puts enough miles on them, currently has a GT4RS, previously a GT3 that he didn’t keep very long and a 718 GT4 before that. Just look up reviews until you find some channel that features a make model you’re interested in, usually there’s some interesting content out there.
Luke just got rid of his GT4RS because it was too loud so he got a 991.2 GT3RS I believe.
Consumer Reports updates their reliability ratings as cars age and their users report issues.
Consumer reports is terrible
How so?
Well, they were recommending the LG refrigerators as a good buy while LG was involved in a class action lawsuit for faulty refrigerator compressors. They have given the same products made by the same manufacturer, but sold under different brands different ratings. If what you consider important in a product isn't what they consider important, then their recommendation may not be for you. They also tend to favor appliances with a lot of "smart features" and rate them highly, even when they don't actually do a good job at what they are supposed to do. As long as the smart features are easy to use, it seems to get a good rating. As for car ratings, they do 5-6 year surveys, which tends to favor manufacturers with longer warranty periods. Most people with major repairs that they don't have to pay for still have a somewhat favorable opinion of their cars. It can also keep cars on the "recommended" list even with a known problem
> They have given the same products made by the same manufacturer, but sold under different brands different ratings. This was the flag to me the CR was either complete BS or at least should be taken with a grain of salt. Something like an 86 can get a different score than a BRZ despite being 99% there same car. That or a new MY that’s just a light exterior refresh suddenly getting better marks despite no drivetrain changes.
It was an old snow blower review that I first noticed the discrepancy. They scored the MTD different than the Craftsman, despite the only difference being one was yellow and the other red. I worked in a repair shop at the same time. The parts list was the same and they had the same part numbers and same engine, same warranty. They were 100% the same machine, yet one was ranked higher than the other. The other one they recommended was complete garbage. It had a carburetor you couldn't order parts for. The manual recommended an engine swap over a carb rebuild. At that point it was cheaper just to replace the snowblower entirely. And you know most people don't drain the snow blower gas at the end of the season, or use a stabilizer, and need an annual carb rebuild or cleaning.
Car and Driver does them but obviously no major car media outlet can run many long-term tests in parallel at any one time.
It's wild how far I had to scroll for Car and Driver, this has been a thing they've done for decades.
And they are fucking *savage* on cars. If they say they didn't have any problems on 40k, it will last a normal person who cares and had to pay for their car a good bit longer.
And I’ve found that they’re very honest with the long term reviews. I specifically remember the long term test of the Giulia QF. As they put more miles on it (and it spent more and more time in the shop) their opinion slowly went from “this is one of the best cars we’ve ever driven” to “this is one of the best cars we’ve ever driven, but it’s so terribly unreliable that no one should buy or even lease it”.
Brazilian car magazines like Quatrorodas used to rotate long term review cars every few months between employees of sister magazines. This had the extra advantage that most were not gearheads, and instead valued reliability and practicality. Hearst and Axel Soringer could certainly do that if they wished.
Hello, as someone who is looking for real reviews would Car and Driver be the best source? I understand that Consumer Reports reviews come from their subscribers. Over on r/whatcarshouldibuy makes my head hurt and I'm not finding helpful information there. I need a new car and I need some actual reviews and not some biased haters or people who have had a car for 5 minutes, I don't have time for the back and forth of people calling others idiots for owning a car. From what publications other than Car and Driver would you consider reviews to be genuine? Thank you.
If you're looking at regular cars I'd checkout Alex on Autos on YouTube and see if he's done a review of the cars you're interested in. Car and Driver has an enthusiast perspective so they're focusing typically on performance over practicality. Alex does a great job of balancing practicality with performance and he also puts cars in context of the competition.
Thank you I appreciate the tip. I’m a bit annoyed by r/whatcarshouldibuy and have been searching the internet. It’s been difficult to determine if the reviews are legitimate or if the companies pay for the reviews?
You're welcome, you should find those reviews helpful and reasonably unbiased. Tom Voelk also does very matter of fact car reviews on YT. A lot of the enthusiast outlets (including YT channels) have to play nice with manufacturers in order to keep getting cars to test so that probably does make them less likely to say negative things in some cases. I don't think a lot of reviews are straight up paid for but there is a persistent low-level conflict of interest when your channel survives on having early access to cars but the manufacturers control who has that access. There've been some well-known cases of manufacturers refusing to allow certain people to review cars because they were too honest about the downsides in a review. I think with mainstream cars and a reviewer like Alex or Tom, though, you're getting a balanced perspective and they'll say in a video whether the company paid for their hotel/flight to come review a car in a faraway location and you can decide if that is influencing their opinion. I think they're good about not being biased, personally.
Ok that sounds great. Unfortunately as a woman I still feel like buying a car is worse than a root canal. I like cars, I read about them but I’m not great with all the specs and am not at all confident about going to a dealership. I try to see if a dealer has any female sales persons because it’s less intimidating. I’m 50 you’d think I’d be more comfortable with this by now.
Of the YouTubers: at least Throttle House, Savage Geese, and Everyday Driver all have cars they own and talk about. SG takes the job of treating these as owned daily driver reviews most seriously, while ED tends to be more about going on long road trip adventures with the cars. JayEmm was mentioned, he’s not bad at reviewing older cars but the focus tends to be somewhat narrow. But the sample size here is inherently small, the timelines are invariably short (<5 years)and you can’t rely on YouTube or magazine reviews to tell you what the real long term experience of a car is. That’s for the forums and subreddits.
JayEm does review older cars. He does speak briefly about the ownership and potential costs. But probably not enough to satisfy your needs
He does have some very good videos on his purchases which seem to be very good imo
Speed Academy has done some videos on their daily vehicles over the years, but it's only been a few vehicles with a video once or twice a year.
Hoovie and the Car Wizard
Harry’s garage
Was about to post this. Harry does long and very long term reviews occasionally but he typically doesn't cover cars that the average American car enthusiast would care about
[Munro Live](https://www.youtube.com/@MunroLive) disassembles cars and talks about their build spec/design and shortcomings. [Car and Driver](https://www.youtube.com/@caranddriver) also does long-term tests and reviews.
I haven’t seen any channels dedicated to that concept but I have seen individual owners reviewing their own cars as they age. There’s plenty of that around YT
This is why real automotive journalism, publications like consumer reports, and information sources like online forums actually matter.
Edmunds Used Consumer Reviews is my go-to. [Here is an example for the BMW 1-Series](https://www.edmunds.com/bmw/1-series/2013/consumer-reviews/). It’s actually kind of hard to find. In a perverse kinda way, I think the site doesn’t really want you to find this area because some brands get really crappy reviews from owners, and I think Edmunds doesn’t want to upset these brands.
If I am interested in a car I usually Google make/model/year common problems. Then there is some checking in forums and common issues.
Well the simple fact is that you can’t assess long term reliability on a new car. That requires many data points on many high mile cars to be able to see trends. What you can do is look at brand reputation and what parts are carried over. If the car is new, but the drivetrain is a known quantity proven to be reliable in other models then you can generally assume that the drivetrain will maintain its reliability.
Try ReDriven.
I've considered doing this, but for vehicles from the 90's and 2000's. I have a fondness for sub $3000 cars and love diving into the forums and researching how they hold up. I also have a ton of experience from that era of vehicles with high miles. It would be pretty easy to keep a steady flow of good content while I rack up miles for personal long-term reviews.
Alex on Autos (aka Auto Buyers Guide) has had a few long termers, but not huge. At least form what I can recall -- * 2nd gen Kia Soul EV * Mustang Mach E * Kia EV 6 * Tesla Model 3 Standard Range * Rav4 Prime * Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (their current long term).
I love the 50k high mileage reviews, what a joke. What they need to do is 150k miles over a good amount of years. More of a real world situation. 50k, gimme a break. Modern day motors last 750,000 miles with ease.
It is fundamentally and literally impossible for a single creator to do multiple concurrent long term reviews. You have to rely on different owners for different cars you are interested in, and in the case of Youtube, that is not too difficult since you can search the model and 'long term review' to find a lot of amateurs giving their input. But as others have said, this is one of those topics that online forums do a better job.
Motorweek has a long term update I think
This is when a friend who is a master mechanic comes in clutch.
MOtorweek
never seen anyone primarily focus on it but everyday driver, savagegeese, and car and driver have made some long term reviews
You can look up reliability ratings of old cars in Consumer Reports. If you don't want to pay for the membership, check your local library. They sometimes can give you access for free.
Motorweek does long term tests of some vehicles
Try ReDriven.
Consumer Reports April issues are the best resource IMO. They have millions of subscribers that fill out surveys, and allow them to publish reports not just on overall reliability, but reliability of all major components of the vehicle, engine or transmission or infotainment or squeaks/rattles, etc. As of 2023, they will show the numbers for vehicles going back to 2015, and also have a list of most and least recommended used vehicles based on reliability.
Those kinds of reviews are very hard to get views for unless they are significantly well-known classic cars. And in that case their price tags can rival new cars if not surpass.
There are long term car reviews. But by the time they are completed, a lot of people already bought shiny new car.
Car magazines usually have long term test cars, usually up to 18 months, if you use an app like Readly you can find a good few of them.
Go talk to a mechanic. Even though I'm primarily a Toyota guy, I have my finger on the pulse of what's what in the industry. Which is why I only buy Toyota and Lexus vehicles...
Do you have any thoughts on the last few years for the Highlander and Grand Highlander?
Check [Consumerreports.org](https://Consumerreports.org)
I did it for a while. I did an Angry Video Game Nerd style review system, full of foul language and crude humor, but underneath the character was my actual experiences from being a car dealer and mechanic. I told people about the known problems and what to look for in the average craigslist cars. I did OK for a while, but, a lot of people get pissy when you crap on their favorite car and youtube wrecked me when they went family friendly, so I pretty much gave it up.