The FN50 survey is carried out by the countries premier fleet publication, Fleet News. The survey asked the top 50 leasing companies to list the most reliable vans they operate.
Now bear in mind that lease companies mostly pay for all of the repairs for their lease vehicles as part of the monthly rental the customer pays, it’s clear that they know all too painfully every time they break down and everything they have to spend on them to keep them on the road, so this is a pretty valid survey and well done to Fleet News for commissioning it.
The survey looked at something like 183,000 light commercial vehicles.
The blue oval scored a hat trick, as the Ford Transit was voted the most reliable van for the third year running and not only did Transit win the gong for most reliable van, Ford also took the honours as the most reliable van manufacturer and that’s some accolade indeed.
In terms of vehicle reliability, the Transit was followed up in second place by Vauxhalls Astravan, third was taken by another Ford, this time the Connect, whilst Mercedes took fourth spot with its Sprinter and a credible fifth went to the Volkswagen Transporter.
In terms of the manufacturer’s reliability table, Ford socked it to them again taking pole position, with Mercedes Benz beside them on the grid, whilst Volkswagen grabbed third ahead of fourth place Vauxhall and Peugeot who took fifth.
I guess there might be a lesson in this, as whilst Ford doesn’t offer the cheapest vans on the market, they clearly build in added value, that can’t be seen sitting on a showroom floor. Every van salesman will tell his customers how reliable the vehicles he sells are and the funny logic in this is if you go off and buy yourself a Ford, you wont know if its any more reliable than the alternative van you could have bought, simply because you didn’t buy the alternate van and it works the other way round to, as you sit stranded on the motorway in your “alternate” van, will you be thinking “I bet the Ford I could have bought isn’t broken down”
