Don’t Waste Money on a Warranty—Buy These Cars

[00:02] warranties exist because dealers are betting your car breaks before you do. we're counting down the used cars that just posted some of the highest dependability scores JD Power has on record. The ones where the smart move is

[00:15] pocketing the warranty money instead of handing it to the finance officer. And that has nothing to do with the official rankings and everything to do with the engine enthusiasts have quietly worshipped for decades. Like, subscribe

[00:28] year. And let's go. Hey guys, real quick, the giveaway for the Shelby and Supra in the $100,000 has ended. And well, the winners are being picked right now. But, we're coming back bigger and better and better. So, click the link in

[00:42] the pinned first comment because, like Rocky who won the GT-R, like Greg who won the 100K, you can sign up to be notified and get 100 free entries once it goes live. So, click the link down below, go put in your email, and I can't

[00:54] wait to show you what we have cooking. All right, back to the show. Okay, after number that genuinely stopped me mid-scroll. The 2020-ish Nissan Maxima posted a 93 out of 100 on the latest dependability scale, which puts it near

[01:09] the top of basically anything sold in America, used or new, ahead of the cars costing three times as much. This is a big, comfortable V6 sedan wearing a suit >> [music] >> With a cabin that punches well above its

[01:24] price tag in a ride that soaks up bad pavement without complaint. Nobody cross-shops a Maxima for excitement. People buy it because it simply keeps working year after year without asking anything of you beyond the oil changes

[01:37] and the occasional set of tires. And quick word from our sponsor, today we the pinned [music] comment down below. If any of these picks have you itching to start shopping, the search engine pulls listings from every major site in

[01:49] one place. [music] So, you can compare pricing and history before you ever set foot on a lot. Sitting [music] one point behind at 92, and honestly, this one shocked me more than the Maxima did, the 2023 Dodge Charger. You'd assume a car

[02:04] offering a V8 option pushing past 700 horsepower would come with an asterisk the size of a billboard, but the data, well, it shows otherwise. This is a full-size muscle sedan that somehow backs up its swagger with a genuine

[02:16] dependability, roomy enough for four adults and their luggage, quick enough to embarrass cars costing twice as much, and honestly, one of the last cars on sale that still feels like it has an actual personality instead of a setting

[02:28] this was the final year of this briefly went electric. So, the window on finding one of these used is starting to close, which makes right now a genuinely smart time to be shopping instead of

[02:41] waiting around and watching prices creep up on you. Moving into truck territory, the 2023 Ram 1500 deserves way more credit than it usually gets in reliability conversations. This is a truck that rides like it forgot it's

[02:55] supposed to be a truck, and a cabin that legitimately competes against luxury SUVs in the top trims, and a suspension that erases road imperfections most pickups just pass straight through to your spine. There's a V6, a couple of V8

[03:08] and while none of them lead the class in plenty capable for the vast majority of buyers who will never actually tow anything heavier than a jet ski trailer twice a summer. Reliability data puts it

[03:21] right in line with far less capable trucks, which makes it one of the rare vehicles where you get a genuinely luxury feel without paying a genuine luxury repair bill. Stick to a trim above the bare-bones base, and you're

[03:33] going to get an infotainment system that doesn't feel like it was designed as an afterthought, which is more than you can say for half the trucks on this list. Back on the car side, don't sleep on the plain unbothered 2023 Toyota Camry, and

[03:48] specifically the V6 version. Everybody already assumes a Camry is reliable. That part, it's not news. It's basically a law of physics at this point. What might surprise you is that this particular Camry can be optioned with a

[04:01] 301 horsepower V6, which is a genuinely funny amount of power to find hiding in a car that is boring on paper. It's fast enough to catch people off guard at a you'll likely sell it to someone else

[04:15] gives you a real problem worth mentioning. Now, if you want something school run and something that I'm currently thinking about buying and currently thinking about buying and giving away, well, the 2023 Lexus GX

[04:28] earns its spot here almost entirely on reputation alone. Lexus already has the best certified pre-owned program in the entire industry, [music] which is a little ironic because the GX is reliable enough that you'd probably never

[04:41] actually use it. This is a proper body-on-frame rotor with a real luxury touch. And while the fuel economy will make you wince and the ride is a little firmer than you'd expect from the brand, the mechanical bones underneath are

[04:53] about as trustworthy as anything on a used lot today. Now, somewhere between the Maxima and the GX is sitting the 2023 Nissan Murano, a car that never seems to get talked about but quietly does everything right. It's not fast,

[05:07] the handling is numb, and nobody has ever described a Murano as thrilling in the history of the automobile. What it does instead is coddle everybody inside it. Upscale cabin, comfortable seats, a smooth ride that makes long highway

[05:19] stretches disappear. All wrapped around a drivetrain that just keeps chugging along without drama, year after year, trip after trip. This is the automotive equivalent of a reliable coworker nobody knows is until the day they're out sick

[05:31] and everything just falls apart, and suddenly everyone remembers exactly how that person was quietly holding it all together. And if budget is the deciding factor, the 2023 Chevrolet Equinox rounds out the list as the practical

[05:45] choice. The interior leans a little more rental car than showroom, and the powertrain won't win any awards, feeling perfectly adequate rather than exciting in literally every scenario. But, the ownership costs are shockingly low.

[05:58] Insurance, maintenance, and repairs all landing well below what you'd pay on most rivals over the same 5-year window. Sometimes the smartest purchase isn't the most exciting one on paper, it's the one that quietly costs you the least

[06:10] money to keep running for the next 5 years while everyone else is writing checks to the mechanic, and they're sending you birthday cards. Now, honorable mention, baby. Now, this is the deal. Everybody overlooks this car,

[06:22] the deal. Everybody overlooks this car, the BMW 340i. In fact, any BMW with the the BMW 340i. In fact, any BMW with the 40i, X540i, X340i, 240i, 340i, and it's the B58 engine that is the star. This is a 3-liter turbocharged inline-6 that BMW

[06:38] most respected engines of the last decade. Closed-deck block, forged enthusiasts for shrugging off six-figure mileage without drama. It's picked up World's Best Engine honors four separate times, and in owner forums where people

[06:54] actually track this stuff, a poll of dozens of B58 owners spanning anywhere from 13,000 to almost 90,000 mi came back with the overwhelming majority back with the overwhelming majority reporting zero issues whatsoever. This

[07:06] is the same engine family that ended up under the hood of the Toyota Supra, which I just gave away, and that should tell you everything you need to know about how much confidence two entirely different car companies placed [music]

[07:18] into it. It's strong enough that tuners regularly push it past 700 on the stock internals without touching a wrench inside the block, and BMW themselves enough headroom that you could easily clear 200,000 mi under normal use.

[07:32] Officially, it won't show up as a JD Power chart next to a Camry, but unofficially, it is ideal among the people who actually work on these things for a living. The B58 has quietly earned a level of trust that most German

[07:45] engines never come close to. If you're the type who wants a warranty-free BMW sentence, this is the one engine in the entire lineup that makes it true. So, here's what all these picks have in

[07:58] things on the lot, and none of them are going to make anyone's [music] jaw drop at a stoplight, except maybe the Charger. What they all share is something far more valuable than curb appeal. A track record of simply not

[08:11] failing when you need them the most. An extended warranty is really just a bet against the car dressed up in a nice font and a friendlier salesman. It exists because the dealership is quietly betting the car will break before you

[08:23] do, and they need you to pay them for that privilege in advance. When the car itself has already proven in cold hard data across tens of thousands of real owners that it doesn't need a bet, the smartest thing that you can do is keep

[08:36] the money in your own pocket instead of handing it over to someone in a tie finance desk. Buy the reliable car, use AutoTempest down below, skip the put it towards something that actually needs it, like gas or tires or

[08:49] absolutely nothing at all because well, that's the whole point of this video. Nobody has ever regretted the extra grand in their savings account. Plenty sitting in a filing cabinet at the dealership attached to a warranty on a

[09:02] car that never once needed it. So, let me know your best stories and worst stories about warranty stories in the comments down below. Like, subscribe so Check out some of these Ideal vids. I'm Brad Danger. This is Ideal, and promise

[09:15] me one thing. Keep living the Ideal lifestyle.