Consumer Reports Says This Car Brand Is The Most Expensive To Maintain

Every year, Consumer Reports (CR) conducts its Annual Auto Survey, where it asks CR members how much they paid out of pocket for maintenance — including oil changes, tire work, and similar upkeep — and repairs over the previous 12 months. For its 2025 analysis, CR used the data from around 380,000 vehicles to estimate these costs over the first five and 10 years of ownership, excluding collision repairs. The car brand that took the spot for the most expensive maintenance was Land Rover, with an estimated 10-year cost of $19,460 and a five-year estimate of $5,560.

To put that figure into perspective, models made by Toyota, a popular mainstream car brand which ranked third cheapest on the list, are projected to cost less than $6,000 in the same 10-year period. That means you could likely maintain at least three Toyota vehicles in place of one Land Rover SUV. Meanwhile, Lexus, a luxury brand producing SUVs with leading customer satisfaction, costs an estimated $7,400 in maintenance over 10 years, meaning that a Land Rover demands 2.6 times more in maintenance expenses than even other luxury brands.

RepairPal also backs up CR's findings, putting the average annual repair and maintenance cost for Land Rover at $1,174 — a figure roughly 80% higher than the all-vehicle average of $652. Over a typical five-year ownership window, that gap compounds to roughly $2,610 in extra costs. That's quite a lot for many profiles, but especially for retirees on a fixed income who could easily end up regreting buying a Land Rover in the first place.

Going by Jaguar Land Rover's (JLR) fiscal year 2025 sales, the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, and Defender are the three most popular Land Rover models globally. RepairPal estimates that an oil change service for the Defender 90 costs between $403 and $434, the Range Rover's at roughly $386 to $423, and the Range Rover Sport's at $350 to $388. By comparison, Kelley Blue Book says a typical oil-and-filter change costs between $35 and $75 with conventional oil, or $65 to $125 with synthetic oil, making these Land Rover estimates several times higher than the general range. Even if Land Rover recommends certain models only need an oil change every two years, RepairPal's estimates suggest that keeping up with oil changes alone could cost roughly $1,750 to $2,170 over a decade on that schedule. However, many experts suggest changing your oil more frequently than that — even if you don't believe the popular myth that you need to change your oil every 3,000 miles — which could increase your maintenance bill even further.

While straightforward services like wheel balancing and tire rotation could remain around the same price as other brands, brake pad replacements, air filter changes, spark plugs, and coolant changes could be considerably higher on the popular Land Rover models. For example, the brake pad replacement on a Defender 90 could run drivers roughly $831 to $888, per RepairPal, whereas the general average range is $320 to $379. And while all you might normally need for an engine air filter replacement is upwards of $76 to $96, the same job on a Range Rover may run you between $160 and $195.