Mechanic Asked To Name The Most Reliable Vehicle. His Response May Surprise You: ‘The Potential To Reach 650,000 Reliable Miles’

A Facebook auto influencer asked his followers to weigh in on reliable cars and then named his top 3. His picks were not the usual suspects that his comments section seemed to expect. He also made the bold claim that any of them can reach 650,000 miles with a maintenance program involving no more than basic oil changes.

What Did This Mechanic Say The 3 Most Reliable Cars Are?

“Three of the most reliable cars of all time with the potential to reach 650,000 reliable miles with just basic oil changes,” RudyCars opens in the video that has drawn more than 51,700 views.

His first choice is the Mazda 3. “That car will very rarely let you down. It will never leave you stranded. It’s a fuel-efficient, reliable four-cylinder engine, cheap to own. I mean, the list goes on. Mazda 3, real good.”

Second is the Nissan Xterra, which he says is the most underrated of the three. “Nobody knows about this car at all, but it’s Nissan Xterra. ... Nissan somehow made one of the best V-6 engines that rivals Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Mazda. One of the best engines I’ve ever seen in a vehicle. Reliable. It’s good for off-roading. It’s a good everyday car.”

He saves the Lexus IS 250 for last: “One of my favorite sedans of all time. A little pricey, but it’s well worth it in the long term. The Lexus IS 250: real good.”

The conspicuous absence is the Toyota Corolla. Replying to a commenter who pushed the Corolla as the obvious answer, RudyCars admitted he left it off the list on purpose: “I own a Corolla! Trust me, I know. I left out the Corolla because it’s too obviously reliable.”

What Does The Reliability Data Actually Say?

The picks are surprising, as the headline promises, but the data tells a different story. iSeeCars’s most recent longest-lasting-cars study, which tracks the share of each model that reaches 250,000 miles, has Toyota holding 10 of the top 25 spots. The Toyota Sequoia leads the table with a 39.1% chance of hitting that mark, more than eight times the industry average of 4.8% across all brands. The brands above the average are Toyota, Lexus, Honda, and Acura. Neither Mazda nor Nissan cracks that group.

To put RudyCars’s 650,000-mile claim in context, even the best-rated vehicle on iSeeCars’s chart has roughly a 40% chance of making it to 250,000 miles. The 650,000 figure belongs to the world of high-mileage outliers, not basic-maintenance norms.

The Lexus IS 250’s Known Engine Issue

But is the Lexus actually that reliable? The 2006–2015 IS 250 used a 2.5 L 4GR-FSE V-6 engine, which is direct-injection only, a design that lets carbon deposits collect on the intake valves because no fuel is washing them clean. The independent Toyota and Lexus specialist CARspec recommends routine induction cleaning “every 60,000 miles, typically in conjunction with your 60,000 mile major service” to keep the engine breathing. The IS 350, which uses port plus direct injection, is not affected. The IS 250 is a well-built Lexus, but it is anything but a no-maintenance engine.

The Xterra also comes with an asterisk. The 2005–2010 Xterra and its VQ40DE-powered siblings, the Frontier and the Pathfinder, had a defect documented by CarComplaints where the radiator’s internal transmission-fluid cooler seal could fail and let engine coolant mix with transmission fluid, killing the transmission.

The 2005 model alone has 307 complaints filed, with typical repair costs above $3,500. Nissan eventually extended the radiator warranty to eight years or 80,000 miles.

'The Most Reliable Car Of All Time Is The Toyota Corolla’

The comments section pushed back in the direction of the data points, with viewers countering with the Toyota Camry, RAV4, and 4Runner. 

“Mazda 3 had some bad years,” wrote Les Lee. “My daughter has a Nissan Xterra that has given her tons of grief,” added Shirley Esquerra.

The unconventional picks are good content, and each of these cars has real advantages. The Mazda 3 is well-built for its class, the VQ40DE V-6 has a strong following among off-roaders, and Lexus's build quality is real. But the brand most likely to hand a driver a quarter-million-mile odometer is the Corolla, which RudyCars deliberately left off the list.

Motor1 reached out to RudyCars via a TikTok channel listed in his Facebook bio and to Mazda, Nissan, and Lexus via email. We’ll be sure to update this if any party responds.