bonzobanana
Guru
I think what happened is that Toyota gained a reputation for good reliable motors and it kinda became the standard if you wanted a used car. Down here older models of these predominate. We have two Toyotas and a Polo which we’ve had to park up as it had become too troublesome. They bring many over from Japan and swap the steering wheel over, which is how our Vitz (Yaris) came. Our Toyota Matrix came from the States (an estate Corolla, also made in the same Canadian factory as the identical Pontiac Vibe) drives like a new car almost. They are difficult to beat.
It’s different in the U.K. as most new cars are company purchases or leased so reliability or resale doesn’t come into it. Look how popular Range Rovers are and they’re the the most unreliable and fast depreciating motors around.
There is no question Landrovers are unreliable and when you look at this chart you can see how bad they are;
https://web.archive.org/web/20210430103028/https://www.reliabilityindex.com/manufacturer
However Jaguar's which are part of the same group and are more reliable than BMWs, Audis and Mercedes and when you look at the more basic Landrover models like the freelander it actually scores reasonably well for a true 4x4.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210225072437/https://www.reliabilityindex.com/reliability/search/133
Compared to a Toyota which is less reliable with more expensive repairs;
https://web.archive.org/web/20180410052841/http://www.reliabilityindex.com/reliability/search/115
Its not just the brand of car its the complexity of the model. Some of the Jaguars are very reliable cars but then they would tend to have manual gearboxes, 4 cylinder engines and be the entry level model with the minimum of gadgets and tech.
Sadly with stringent emissions regulations cars and getting more complex so less reliable and more likely to be scrapped sooner which means more environmental waste. You are getting cars with tiny engines that are thrashed hard to achieve reasonable performance with low emissions but of course that means higher failure rates later in their lifespan. However EV's are typically more reliable (unless Teslas) so reliability is improving again.
Depreciation is a funny statistic as it doesn't include customisation or forecourt discounting in the formula so if you buy a car and pay a lot for options and then sell that car the depreciation is not based on the price you paid or the options you paid for just the list price vs the price you get and if a trade in price it could be inflated too. So you need to be wary of so called depreciation in the UK as many cars require many options to be purchased or other marques allow heavy discounting at the showroom. It's a way of manipulating the consumer to sell cars in some instances as some brands end up looking like they have low depreciation when they really don't. If you look here you can see low reliability luxury cars seem to have low depreciation;
https://www.whatcar.com/news/revealed-the-slowest-depreciating-cars-in-the-uk/n21901#1
It's complete nonsense of course as people would have spent huge amounts on options for these vehicles because their options lists are absolutely massive. I think the true low depreciation vehicles are more likely Dacia, they don't do much in showroom discounting and their simplicity means they remain reliable and cheap to repair for many, many years and are sought after.
It's a bit like bicycles and ebikes you shouldn't expect to go into a bike shop and be given totally fair and honest advice. The sales people are there to extract money from you. I've gone into bike shops and been totally lied to or at least holding back the information I have requested because I played dumb, I'm sure if I presented myself as knowledgeable I would have been treated differently. This has happened in a huge number of premium bike shops. I used to do it myself when I was a hifi salesman. I see many unreliable cars with horrific repair costs get recommended by mainstream car magazines and internet sites and even Which consumer magazine has some absolutely horrible cars as best buys because they aren't considering long term ownership costs properly.