Show of hands: Who among our readers remembers specifically the year, make, and model of the first car they owned? And, for extra credit, how many miles did you drive it before having to move on to car No. 2, 3, and 4?
The cars we own early on in life tend to stand out and make an impression, good and bad, on the decisions we make with our car-buying decisions through the rest of our time behind the wheel. And since auto industry data show the average person owns 10 different cars in their lifetime, that’s a whole lot of influence coming from the experiences we get from the vehicles we get when we’re barely capable of taking care of them properly (says the guy whose first two mostly unremarkable Pontiac Firebirds died via a head-on collision and an engine that seized up due to an overlooked oil leak).
Mechanics are great people to ask about the vehicles they wish they could own again, which is what’s driving the popularity of a recent TikTok video from Colorado-based Accurate Automotive (@accurateautoinc). The full-service repair center asked a handful of its technicians to name the car from their past they wish they could own again.
Their preferred brands and/or models, in order:
Reliability and ease of maintenance are cited in many cases as the main reason for preferring a particular brand or model. That means something coming from folks who earn their living looking at broken down vehicles all day every day.
Having a Subaru make the list is hardly a surprise since as of late last year auto industry authority J.D. Power found the carmaker had the highest amount of brand loyalty among current owners.
What is surprising, according to the folks at Carparts.com, is that Subaru rates so highly even though its vehicles traditionally don’t perform as reliably as Toyota or Honda, which were also named in the video. An analysis of what influences loyalty found that overall quality (as measured by J.D. Power and other benchmarks) doesn’t factor as highly as you'd think.
In fact, the folks at Entrepreneur found the key marketing strategies for building quality are:
No mention at all of communicating quality and reliability, except maybe as part of the “positive experiences” category.
Commenters on the video were more than happy to share their own thoughts about what car they’d prefer to own again, with plenty of Toyota and Honda models getting name-checked.
“2004 Honda Civic Si Hatchback. Regret selling it,” one viewer shared.
We were impressed by this one: “my 2014 (Volkswagen) Golf TDI…. delivered pizzas for 5 years with it and put over 350k miles with zero breakdowns.”
@accurateautoinc What car would you own again?#fyp #automotive #autorepair #mechanic #carcommunity #cars #trucks #vehicles #carrepair #garage #carsoftiktok #vehicles ♬ original sound - AccurateAuto
And Honda got some more love from the commenter who wrote, “Honda Element. Would buy another one if they still made them!!”
We reached out to Sccurate Automotive via email.
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