The Toyota Land Cruiser is famously built to last. Used across the Australian Outback, throughout Africa’s toughest areas and in violent conflict zones by United Nations peacekeeping forces, it’s supposed to outlast everything else in the harshest conditions. According to a new study by iSeeCars, it’s also outlasting everything in American garages, with the highest average ownership length of any new car.
The study looked at over 5 million transactions of vehicles being sold by their original owners. On average, the cars that they looked at were kept for 8.4 years before changing hands. Land Cruiser buyers, though, keep their cars for 11.4 years.
The top ten is rounded out by three other SUVs, five sports cars and one sedan. The Toyota Avalon, according to iSeeCars, is the tenth-longest-kept vehicle on sale and the top sedan with an average original ownership period of 9.7 years. The next car on the list is, shockingly, the BMW 3 Series with a length of 9.6 years. Given the car’s high lease rates and premium status, that’s a surprise.
Unsurprisingly, the list is heavily skewed toward nameplates that have existed for decades. The Mercedes SL, Porsche 911, Chevy Corvette and Ford Mustang make the list.
Those examples are also sports cars that tend to be popular second cars, used on weekends or as retirement cars. It’s not surprising, then, to see them sticking around for a while.
And though pickup trucks are often marketed for their durability and longevity, none of them crack the top 10. The one that owners keep the longest, according to the study, is the Nissan Frontier. They’re kept for 9.1 years on average, which may be partially due to the model’s slow rate of change over the years.
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