CarMD has released its annual Vehicle Health Index Reliability Rankings which aim to show which vehicles are the most reliable and cheapest to repair.



In order to do this, they analyzed data from over 14.4 million vehicles from the 1996-2019 model years which had their engine light come on between October 1st, 2018 and September 30th, 2019.

While this is somewhat troublesome, the study claims that Mercedes vehicles are the most reliable. The German automaker was followed by Mitsubishi, Buick, Ram and Ford.

When it came to cost, the most affordable vehicles to repair with a check engine light were made by Kia. The average cost to fix them was just $321 which put the company slightly ahead of Mazda ($332), Hyundai ($333) and Chrysler ($337).

Getting even more specific, the most reliable vehicles were the 2017 Honda CR-V, 2017 Subaru Outback and 2016 Lexus NX. Rounding out the top five were the 2017 Subaru Legacy and 2017 Honda Civic.

The vehicles that were the cheapest to repair were the 2017 Subaru Outback ($60), 2016 Toyota Prius ($67) and 2017 Hyundai Tucson ($79). All three models were slightly cheaper to fix than the 2017 Kia Soul ($82) and 2016 Mercedes C-Class ($85).

Of course, the study comes with a massive caveat as it states “one of the most common repairs on the most affordable vehicles to fix is to inspect or replace a loose, damage or missing gas cap.” Needless to say, it’s not really a repair or a reflection on reliability if someone simply doesn’t tighten the gas cap enough.

That’s certainly the case with clueless Outback owners as the reason the 2017 model was so cheap to ‘repair’ was that one of the most common issues was a loose gas cap. As a result, countless owners were billed for something that should be common sense.