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July 23, 2026 By alex martinez
The best and worst question you can ask any car person is 'What car should I get?' Wallets start sweating. The internet comes alive in a bulging, beastly way. And then you panic buy an Infiniti G35 and get banned from your local meet. That's a real thing.
So what actually is the best car brand for you? We're going to stand on the walking plank and tell you. We already share our biased opinions with everyone in person, so why not tell the internet, which is definitely just as easygoing and definitely not going to criticize every choice on this list 😉.
We ranked every major car brand into four tiers, judged purely through the enthusiast lens. We don't care who makes the nicest showroom car. We care about what happens after you buy it.
Four things decide where a brand lands on the pyramid:
Because let's be honest, none of us are making friends any other way than standing in cold parking lots talking about car parts.
One bit of housekeeping before the pyramid: if you're shopping for a Suzuki, an old Saab, or a Ferrari 430 Scuderia, those are all S tier. You already know exactly what you're doing. Go on, skedaddle.
Four tiers, every brand judged on cost, mods, tolerance, and community. Tier 4 misses on most of it. Tier 1 is the safest place to put your money as an enthusiast. Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren live in their own supercar bucket, because ranking them on used market value and mod tolerance is like ranking yachts on fuel economy.
Starting at the bottom with brands that probably aren't a good place to start, because they don't do any of our criteria well.
If your local marketplace is anything like ours, you've seen a '93 Bentley Turbo R sitting under $15,000 and thought that's kinda dope. Then you find out a long block rebuild costs $15,000. The same as the car. We're trying to help you here. It's not a good idea.
Sorry, Kendrick fans. The Grand National and the six-figure GNX aren't enough anymore. You could argue for the Regal GS with its 3.6L V6 and Brembos, but the 5x115 bolt pattern is dumb and the aftermarket support just isn't there.
Top of Tier 4. There's a real community here, but modifications, tolerance and reliability, and used market value all come up short. We want you to be able to wrench on your car. We think that's one of the funnest things you can do with one, and Tesla just doesn't have that yet. If you've got a Model S though, 20x9 +30 wheels on 255/40s look perfect. Thank us later.
Tier 3 brands do one or two things well or own a niche, but it's still not quite enough for a newer enthusiast to hop into. Like your performative friend who picked up a new hobby and immediately bought the brand the internet told them to, folks who own these either have to explain to you why it's worth it, or they guessed.
There's one guy on TikTok trying to tell the world that used Maseratis aren't that bad. They are. Even the best-maintained Maserati is marginally better than a Fiat for a fraction of the cost. Stop calling it a Ferrari, friend. It isn't one. Jaguars are cool, but they sit in an oddly expensive market for what they are. Buy one if you're trying to be different but don't quite have E90 M3 money. Just know they look like that old Kia, and people will confuse yours constantly.
Spoiler: Kia sits above all of those. The Stinger is properly good, and if you can find a clean one you won't regret it. The 368hp 3.3L twin-turbo absolutely rips. Is it still a Kia? Yeah. It's still good. Slam it on Air Lift Performance suspension with 20x9.5 +22 wheels and 235/35R20 Falkens like the 303 Panda Stinger did on our build threads and you're set. Outside the Stinger, though, there's not much else.
Astons are so, so cool, they've hit a good resale window, and the DB models have decent reliability. A 2006 DB9 is a sneaky pick for a good deal right now if you like the style. Ford owned a majority stake until 2007, which means coil packs, filters, pulleys, and even some sensors carry Ford part numbers, so those repairs aren't bad at all. Everything that isn't a Ford part is still expensive, and the community absolutely exists. You're just not going to find it on TikTok. It's on Facebook, because they're all old.
All three sit near the top of the tier. The Fiat Abarth 500 is a genuinely good pick for someone who wants the Miata or S2000 feeling in something smaller that looks like a bean and makes all the right noises. Alfa Romeo is growing on us, but we can't rank it higher: the model names are upsetting for some reason, the early Giulia Quadrifoglio had real reliability issues, and even the fixed newer cars stay meticulous about maintenance. If you DIY it and get it wrong, they tend to blow up.
Top of Tier 3 has to be Mercedes. There are things Mercedes did great: cool supercharged V8s, depreciation to perfect enthusiast values, and pre-E63 design language that made some of the best looking cars on the planet. But most of that is old news, like YouTubers telling you to subscribe. E55 AMGs are dying to electrical issues, E63s are getting totaled in Memphis, and what's left from AMG is the GT series: the C, the S, the GTR. All fantastic cars, but the hot vee layout makes them tough to work on without serious mechanical knowledge.
Hear us out: the community is there, the mods are there, and the platforms used to be here, but they've been fading ever since AMG decided V8s were too cool for sedans. To be Tier 2 you have to be in the now scene of the community, and we just don't see Mercedes there much anymore. That said, Niche Misanos on Toyos with lowering links were the best looking wheel and tire setup an E55 AMG ever wore. We had one. 500-ish horsepower, spanked Corvettes, cost $16,000. If you can put up with the electrical gremlins, you'll love these cars too.
Tier 2 is where things get serious. These brands get two or three things right: an active community, cars that modify well, and platforms that take those mods without falling apart. If you're shopping a model from this list, you're on the safer side of your pocketbook.
The CTS-V, the Evo, and the SRT8, SRT6, and SRT4 are all bang-on options, and they're all ridiculous, unnecessary fun that still leaves stupid grins on their drivers' faces. You want to go to school, little Tommy? Hop in the 556 horsepower, 551 lb-ft, 6.2L grocery getter that can stall the gravity of Earth. Cadillac made that, and the CTS-V wagon will go down as one of our favorite domestic wagons ever built. If you do it, you know ball. The Evo is single-handedly holding Mitsubishi up, and while they're great cars, we'll see fewer of them every year. Dodge we like for the intention: the Viper is cool, the value on older cars is real. Dodge quality is less cool. You're buying something from a company that treated the interior like an IKEA staged kitchen and hoped you wouldn't notice the plastic.
MINI is here because of the R53, R56, and F56, and the fact that these cars are cracked. The only con is when the fun wears off and you're left with a rattling timing chain. That's just part of the deal.
Sneaking Genesis in because we keep seeing G70s modified, slammed, and ripping around in what seems to be without issues. KDM cars have worked their way into every market segment, and Genesis is solidifying itself as a properly good car that looks badass. Plus they're in endurance racing now with GMR.
This one hurts because we want it higher. Audi has the B5 S4, the five-cylinder TT RS, and arguably the best supercar ever made for people like us, the R8. What we wish Audi was doing is more old Audi stuff. The pre-2015 era was the best, and somewhere in the last decade they lost themselves in their design language. The community is good, but it's aging and not getting replenished.
Acura keeps doing really good work and then slipping right before the payoff. They build the chance at a community, then kill the model before it gets popular. The TLX Type S, the Type S badge in general, and the old-school JDM catalog are all icons.
You know why. We don't even have to explain it.
Scion gave us the FR-S, and we're convinced Toyota wouldn't be what it is today for enthusiasts without it. The tC walked so Gazoo Racing could fly. And we will not stop telling the world that the factory supercharged tC is one of the best budget fun cars you can buy, period. They're like four grand. Nobody wants them because they're kind of ugly. They're fine. They're fun.
Near the top of Tier 2 is Infiniti, somehow getting banned at car shows while also having done something genuinely special with the G35, G37, and Q50 Red Sport, the foundation the modern Nissan Z stands on. Do they blow up? Yeah. Is that a big deal? Potentially. If you're buying a performance Infiniti you're a bit of a masochist, so bring experience and patience.
If this were a ranking of just the best brands, Porsche would be much higher. But Porsches are outrageously expensive right now, and what we used to give Ferrari crap for is now standard practice in the new P-car market. A $225K base car becomes a $480K fully equipped example, and that, friends, is wild. The lineup itself is incredible: 944s are fantastic budget track cars, the 996 Carrera is finding a home in the modification world, 997s are equal parts show car and driver's car, the Cayman and Boxster are supported by brands across the globe, and the GT3 RS is the pinnacle amateur track car if that's your budget. The only reason it's not Tier 1, and we will die on this hill, is that affordability has to be part of the formula. Porsches rarely are, and the parts are exclusively German and exclusively expensive. No razzle-dazzle VW-to-Bugatti parts crossover here.
The top tier, counted down from tenth place to the best enthusiast brand of 2026. Every brand here hits affordability, mods, tolerance, and community at the same time.
Subaru is here because the platform is still growing. The VA and VB WRX pick up more support every day, and the styling is winning people over. Unlike Mitsubishi, even with the tolerance issues on some engines, there are loads of cars in the catalog to love. The Hawkeye STI is still properly gorgeous.
Nissan edges Subaru on tolerance. People may not agree, but the Nissan Z at its normal price of $45K new or $35K used is a great deal, and so is the rest of the lineup. The 370Z is a perfect budget pick for new enthusiasts, and you don't need a G80 to look good. 370Zs are timeless, and clean 350Zs will become the next generation's R32 non-GTR.
Mazda sits above Nissan because while Nissan has the Z, Mazda has the Miata, and the Miata is perfect. Spec racing, the Mazda Motorsports parts program, and one of the last used cars that's actually cheap instead of just affordable. Mazdas have an absurdly high tolerance for questionable mods and last forever. If you're wondering whether Miata is the answer: it is. Controversial pick within the pick: skip the NA and NB hype and get an NC. It's properly good value right now.
What Mazda does well with one car, Hyundai is starting to do with lots of them. The N lineup is properly good, they race (and win) in TCR with the Elantra N TCR, and they're the most affordable way to get real performance in a new car. You'll eat a touch of depreciation, but the cars and the community are the real thing.
Dead equal. What both do better than anyone is displacement power: you get a lot of oomph without doing much. The Mustang has so many generations that whatever driving you like, some model year has it. Same for the Camaro and the Corvette. Both brands would rank higher, but the top performance trim costing six times the base model is a price creep you don't see from the brands above them.
The father of the people's car. The GTI, the Golf R, the Polo, the Corrado, and most importantly, the community. In terms of creativity, nobody does it better than the VW world. Almost every trend you've seen up until about last year came from these people.
Honda has done an incredible job building enthusiast cars: the Civic Si, the Type R, the old Prelude, the Accord. Even with Honda visibly wrestling with what comes next against BYD competition, they have a stranglehold on a certain kind of driving fun, and the newest Type R might be one of the best Civics ever engineered.
A lot of Toyota's current success was built on what Scion got right: the budget, entry-level enthusiast sports car. Toyota took that and refined it. The GR86, GR Corolla, GR Yaris, and the Supra are all fantastic. They're not cheap, but $40K to $50K at Toyota buys something that fills nearly every bucket a car needs to fill. The B58 is humanity's gift to itself, and if you want a platform that teaches you how to modify, drive, and enjoy a car, the Mk5 Supra will sit in a perfect position for a very long time.
BMW has nailed the recipe over the past decade. We're convinced the reason you see fewer Mercedes and Audis on the road is that BMW figured out how to make a car for everyone: enthusiast, dentist, doctor, or person who doesn't understand what 8% APR does on an 84-month loan. The M2 is fantastic. The E36 is a fantastic drift car. The E46 M3 is the best analog car. Sure, there are some ugly cars in the portfolio, but from the 80s to now, BMW has always had something best in class. Even the G80, as much crap as it catches for being everywhere, is basically this generation's GT3 RS: an almost perfect car that most owners never fully extract. If you want our pick, it's the E46 M3, and it probably always will be.
Affordability is the most important thing in the formula, because modifying a car costs a ton of money to do right. If you have a $20,000 budget, buy a $10,000 car. By the time you've added all the silly little parts that make you smile like a dumb little child, you'll already be over budget. Yes, this is partly a campaign to get everyone into supercharged Scion tCs.
Disagree with the pyramid? Good. Tell us. We ranked these for the people standing in cold parking lots, not for the brands.
My name is Alex, or Alex Martini (Alex.Martini__) and I love building unreliable cars. From track, road, drag and drift, there really isn't a motorsport I love. PS if you're reading this, just know that we've got some WILD builds coming for MartiniWorks that we're really excited to share with you :)
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