Reliability Supertest 2008 - Introduction

A car's reliability can make your motoring life bright and happy, or it can become dark and foreboding. However, it's not easy to sort the dream cars from the wickedly unreliable ones.

Fear not – help is at hand with What Car?'s annual reliability report.

We've teamed up with leading independent warranty provider Warranty Direct, which every year shells out millions of pounds in warranty claims, so it knows exactly which cars are reliable, and how much the repairs cost.

The cars in the survey are between one-and-a-half and nine years old.

Read on, to find out the best and worst performers in the past year.