Revealed: Most reliable car brands
You get what you pay for, right? Or at least that’s what the old saying would have us believe.
But a new survey suggests that in the motoring world, that’s not necessarily the case.
In fact, when it comes to reliability, the most highly-thought-of brands are actually producing the most underwhelming results.
Car reliability put to the test
The J.D. Power study, now in its fifth year, measures the number of problems experienced per 100 vehicles (PP100) to rank brands in order of dependability to ultimately find the most reliable car brand.
That means the lower the PP100 value, the better the manufacturer has rated.
In total, the study measures 177 problem symptoms across eight different categories: vehicle exterior; driving experience; features/controls/displays (FCD); seats; heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC); vehicle interior; and engine and transmission and the aforementioned ACEN.
The data is based on the feedback from 11,530 owners of new vehicles registered from November 2015 to January 2018.
Top 5 most reliable car brands
At the top of the leader board, taking home the crown for most reliable car brand was Peugeot with a score of 77 PP100.
That’s a monumental result for a manufacturer – and nation as a whole – that’s stereotyped as producing untrustworthy vehicles.
Skoda and Hyundai took the next two spots with ratings of 88 and 90 PP100 respectively, while Nissan and Suzuki completed the top five most dependable car makers of 2019.
Top 5 least reliable car brand
While the general consensus from drivers was that vehicles are becoming more reliable – improving on the results from last year – there are still a worrying number of issues caused by navigation systems fitted into the latest models.
This makes premium cars equipped with the latest sat-navs more problematic.
As a result, premium brands like BMW and Audi are at the bottom of the reliability standings.
The two German marques were found to suffer 181 and 167 problems per 100 vehicles, with Fiat splitting the brands with an equally poor dependability performance.
Jaguar, Land Rover and Mercedes were also low down in the table, proving that spending large amounts on new and relatively-new cars won’t guarantee you reliability.
More work to do to improve reliability
Josh Halliburton, Head of European Operations at J.D. Power, says it’s clear that manufacturers of new safety technologies still have work to do to – particularly premium brands.
“It’s also going to be vital for vehicle makers to win customer trust in this technology if they’re to convince potential buyers that fully automated vehicles in the future will be reliable,” he adds.
“For example, such buyers are quite likely to question the safety of self-driving cars if brands still struggle with the accuracy of their navigation systems.”
Interestingly, electric and hybrid cars have a higher total amount of problems than conventional petrol and diesel motors.
Despite this, owners of low-emissions cars feel they’re more likely to repurchase or lease the same brand in the future.
Full results of the J.D. Power 2019 study, including model reliability, can be found on the dependability report’s dedicated website.
Now you know what the most reliable car brands on the market are why not have a look on our Top Car hub and see if there’s motors that take your fancy.
