May 31, 2014

Follow CommentsFollowing CommentsUnfollow Comments Who wants a car that’s “worthless?” Maybe you should. The key is, how many miles can you get out of it before a car or truck reaches that point? By that measure, Toyota makes the longest-lasting cars and trucks, at an average of more than 200,000 miles, according to New York-based Mojo Motors, the company behind the used-car classified ad site mojomotors.com . In a recent analysis, Honda was the only other big-volume brand that topped 200,000 miles before its cars reach the theoretical “worthless” point, the company said. Domestic brands Ford , Dodge and Chevrolet rounded out the Top 5, mostly on the strength of their trucks, the company said. “We’re interested in the market that’s beyond just 1- or 2-years-old. There’s a huge market for 3- to 15-year-old cars. That’s where the volume is, in used cars,” said Paul Nadjarian, founder and CEO of Mojo Motors. There’s no escaping the fact that a car is a depreciating asset. An old rule of thumb is that most cars depreciate 40 percent as soon as they drive off the lot, or an average of about 55 percent after three years. As the saying goes, the way to get the most value out of a car purchase is to buy a reliable used car and drive it “until the wheels fall off.” But which cars and trucks are reliable in the long run? And figuratively speaking, at what point do those wheels fall off, anyway? Mojo Motors sought answers to those questions recently, by analyzing its listings for more than half a million cars and trucks from model years 1995 though 2014. 2011 Toyota Tacoma (Photo credit: M.CERASOLI) “We’re a product company that’s awash in Big Data,” said Nadjarian. “As a statistical and mathematical exercise, we did a linear regression analysis to find out, with each mile added, how much value do you lose on a per-mile basis? And theoretically, at what point do you lose all value?” he said in a recent phone interview. The company came up with a list of the Top 10 brands, in terms of the maximum number of miles at which their cars and trucks become theoretically “worthless.” Nadjarian said some smaller-volume brands may have fallen off the list due to small sample sizes. Here’s the list, according to mojomotors.com: 1. Toyota – 210,705 miles until worthless; 2. Honda – 209,001 miles until worthless; 3. Ford – 198,409 miles until worthless;