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2023 What Car? Reliability Survey: Most and least reliable car brands
In our annual Reliability Survey, we ask readers to rate the dependability of cars aged up to five years old. Here we rank the most and least reliable car manufacturers in the UK...
If you've decided on a specific car class or model, it will be helpful to check how well they rank for reliability in their respective sectors, but if you're not sure which one to go for, checking the brand rankings is a good place to start.
You may think that all fairly new cars have great reliability ratings, but the data collected for the annual What Car? Reliability Survey shows just how different they can be.
Toyota and its premium brand Lexus top our dependability charts, and Cupra and Alfa Romeo sit at the other end of the spectrum, with a difference of more than 15% separating the best from the worst.
Read on to find out which are the best and worst car brands for reliability.
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Brand reliability for cars aged up to five years old
Rank | Brand | Score |
1 | Lexus | 98.3% |
2 | Toyota | 97.4% |
3 | Mini | 97.2% |
4 | Suzuki | 96.9% |
5 | Mitsubishi | 96.2% |
6 | Honda | 95.9% |
7 | Hyundai | 94.3% |
8 | Kia | 93.8% |
9 | Volvo | 93.7% |
10 | Tesla | 93.6% |
11 | Dacia | 93.1% |
12 | BMW | 93.0% |
13 | Mazda | 92.8% |
14 | Citroen | 92.3% |
15 | Fiat | 92.0% |
16 | Skoda | 91.4% |
17 | Ford | 91.4% |
18 | Seat | 90.9% |
19 | Nissan | 90.7% |
20 | Porsche | 90.7% |
21 | Peugeot | 90.5% |
22 | Volkswagen | 90.2% |
23 | Renault | 90.0% |
24 | Mercedes | 89.8% |
25 | MG | 89.2% |
26 | Audi | 89.1% |
27 | Subaru | 89.0% |
28 | Land Rover | 87.6% |
29 | Jaguar | 87.4% |
30 | Vauxhall | 86.9% |
31 | Alfa Romeo | 85.6% |
32 | Cupra | 82.4% |
To read the reliability data for other car classes follow these links:
All cars and SUVs here
Most reliable small cars
Most reliable family cars
Most reliable executive cars
Most reliable luxury cars
Most reliable small SUVs
Most reliable family SUVs
Most reliable large SUVs
Most reliable seven-seaters
Most reliable electric cars
Most reliable electric SUVs
Most reliable sports cars
What's the most dependable car by fuel type?
If reliability is your priority, you’ll be best off buying a hybrid. Just 17% of the plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) in our survey went wrong, while 18% of regular hybrids had a glitch.
Petrol models as a whole were only slightly less dependable, with a fault rate of 20%. Diesels and electric cars proved to be the least reliable, with a joint-highest fault rate of 26%. Hybrids will generally cost you the least to repair, too. All of the PHEVS and 94% of the regular hybrids we were told about were fixed for free; only 1% of hybrid owners had to pay more than £1500 to get their car put right.
Eighty percent of faulty petrol and electric models were fixed for free, and only 2% of owners had to pay more than £1500. Only 70% of diesels cost owners nothing. And they’re the priciest to repair; 4% of owners had to find more than £1500 to get their cars back on the road.
Which models cost the most and least to repair?
The good news is that 83% of the cars in our survey had their faults fixed for free, but on the flip side, 2% of owners faced bills that exceeded £1500 for each issue.
When it comes to costly repairs, it’s the diesel versions of the current BMW 3 Series that are the worst: 42% of the examples in our survey cost more than £1500 to repair.
That’s a higher proportion of large bills than for the previous-generation 3 Series (2012-2019) – 30% of those who own petrol and diesel models built from 2012-2019 paid more than £1500 to fix faults.
A third of Jaguar F-Type owners were also charged more than £1500 to get their cars back on the road, and 31% of Skoda Karoq diesels cost this much too.
In contrast, many car makers fixed every fault with certain models for free. These include the Audi A1, the BMW 1 Series, the Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid, the 2013-2021 Lexus IS and the Lexus NX, the Porsche 718 Boxster and Porsche 718 Cayman, the Suzuki Swift, the Tesla Model Y, the previous and current Toyota Yaris and the Volvo XC60.
Which cars took the longest to fix?
When a faulty car needs to be taken to a garage for repair work, some are in and out on the same day, while others linger there for a week or more.
The worst model for lengthy repairs was the Subaru Outback (2014-2021) – all the examples we were told about were rendered undriveable by their faults and were out of action for more than a week.
Likewise, all faulty examples of the Audi TT, the Lexus UX, the Porsche Cayenne and the Renault Captur were in dealerships for more than a week.
What's the most dependable type of gearbox?
Automatic gearboxes – whether they be conventional or the dual-clutch gearbox type – gave very few problems for the owners of cars fitted with them, with a fault rate of just 1% in that area.
Manual gearboxes and clutches were a bit more troublesome generally, with a fault rate of 3%.
Surprisingly, the gearbox type that proved the least reliable was the single-speed automatic found in most electric vehicles (EVs) – 14% of EV owners reported an issue in this category.
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