Maintenance survey: 5 most expensive cars to maintain, and Jaguar doesn’t make the list
Audio By Carbonatix
It’s one of those heartbreaking laws of car buying. Performance and luxury cars tend to require a pretty penny to repair and maintain. And a glance at a maintenance survey confirms that much, with British and German luxury brands taking all five of the top spots. Surprisingly, though, Jaguar is strangely absent from the list.
Land Rover and Porsche take the priciest spots among the most expensive cars to maintain, but Jaguar is nowhere to be found
Land Rover is the most expensive car brand to maintain and repair, per KBB. But not by a small margin, mind you. According to a survey, the British luxury SUV marque costs owners an average of $19,250 to keep running over a decade. However, Jaguar, another British brand notorious for expensive shop bills, is nowhere on the list.
The culprit may be volume. In 2023, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) sold nearly 432,000 vehicles worldwide. Of those sales, Jaguar accounted for just 66,866 units. Even Porsche, the lowest-volume German brand on the list, delivered 320,221 vehicles that same year. Quite frankly, Jaguar may just fall in with Land Rover or miss consideration for the rankings altogether.
| Car brand | Average 10-year maintenance costs |
|---|---|
| Land Rover | $19,250 |
| Porsche | $14,090 |
| Mercedes-Benz | $10,525 |
| Audi | $9,890 |
| BMW | $9,500 |
| Volvo | $9,285 |
But that doesn’t mean Jaguar is magically affordable to repair, maintain, or run. In a separate 2023 list of the most expensive car brands to maintain, Endurance Warranty ranked Jaguar as the No. 4 priciest automaker. The usual suspects made up the first three spots, namely Porsche, BMW, and Land Rover, respectively.
Beyond the macro level, individual shops have had plenty of pricey experiences with Jaguar and its cars. For instance, a Georgia mechanic agreed that Land Rover belongs in the top five. But, in his experience, the most expensive car brand to maintain is the Coventry Cat itself, not Land Rover. In two years, the mechanic said the average repair order for a Jaguar was over $1,500, much more than a comparable BMW.
