The most credible fleet publication, Fleet News, conducts a survey every year across the UK’s top 50 Fleet Operators and leasing companies to find out what have been the most reliable car and manufacturer.
You can’t really question this survey, as the participants of the survey; jointly run over 1 million cars and they should know.
Anyway, cut to the chase:-
All ten of the top cars, are effectively German or Japanese!
Honda Civic took first place, with Honda making three of the five most reliable cars in the survey. BMW took second place, not doing so badly either with two of their cars in the top five.
- Honda Civic
- BMW 3 Series
- Honda Jazz
- Honda Accord
- BMW 5 Series
- Audi A4
- Benz C-Class
- Mini
- Toyota Avensis
- Volkswagen Golf
BMW however had reason to be pleased as they took first place as “most reliable manufacturer” and that’s for the second year running.
Maybe its true, maybe it isn’t, but these results certainly support the view that the Japanese and German manufacturers make the most reliable cars.
Another German car maker Audi, grabbed third spot, with “guess what” the Japanese, with Toyota took 4th place leaving two more German brands (Volkswagen & Mercedes) fighting over fifth and sixth respectively.
Ford took 7th place, with the rest of the top ten being rounded off by more Japanese and German cars (getting kind of repetitive isn’t it!) as Mazda, Nissan & Skoda round off the top ten.
Most reliable car manufacturer
- BMW
- Honda
- Audi
- Toyota
- Volkswagen
- Mercedes-Benz
- Ford
- Mazda
- Nissan
- Skoda
You cant “I guess” argue with this kind of survey, however, reliability has a lot to do with the way cars are driven and most of the cars did well in this survey, aren’t (in the main part) the type of cars we see rep’s thrashing up and down our motorways in.
Our staple diet of cars such as Ford Focus, Vauxhall Astra (and that kind of car) are superb vehicles that get the hell beaten out of them by drivers on a day to day basis and yet stand-it and do the job really well, so from my personal point of view, whilst you cant argue with statistics, I am sure if the cars that are listed here as the winners, got the same kind of relentless beating that these cars get, well they wouldn’t be featuring anywhere near as well as they do currently and to support that, for ourselves, we have had some of the cars that feature in this list out to hard users and frankly they perform no better in terms of reliability, but they do seem to cost an awful lot to repair when they go wrong.
Shame you didn’t make the list, Ford, Vauxhall etc, but then, you do make cars to be used, not just looked at.
