What Car and Warranty Direct reliability survey..

[bpsorrel]

Unsurprisingly, Japanese cars at the top and Mercedes at the bottom, but some surprises....

BBC News - Japanese cars are 'most reliable' used car brands in UK

 

[whitenemesis]

"Luxury goods are products and services that are not considered essential and are associated with affluence" - Perhaps it's not the purchase price that defines luxury but the cost of ownership? A way of ensuring some sort of exclusivity with 'mass market' products?

 

[Charles Morgan]

How exactly do they define breakdown, as the rates would seem to me to be exceptionally high even for the top marques in the survey.

 

[st4]

I've never had a mechanical failure in a Mercedes. LOL

 

[Deleted member 37751]

I always find these surveys a bit skewed.

Lexus apart, most Japanese car manufacturers offer cars that are very electrically basic which will be the biggest complaint for the 'prestige' market.

Land Rovers have the highest proportion of vehicles that will 'go to work' off-road, which means that they'll lead a lot harder lives than a Honda Jazz pootling to and from the shops.

 

[Charles Morgan]

In what way are they electronically basic, SPX? I think the Japanese have demonstrated consistently that they can build electronic systems of considerable complexity with total reliability, whereas Germany seems to be incapable of so doing.

 

[Deleted member 37751]

In what way are they electronically basic, SPX?

Sorry, bad phrasing, should have made myself a bit clearer.

What I was/am trying to say is that 'prestige' cars have more electrics that can go wrong, whereas mass-produced cars made by far-eastern companies tend to rely a lot less on electrics.

Which means by nature that they have less to go wrong.

I'm not having a pop at the Japs, if I wanted to buy a 'safe' car, I'd buy a Toyota.

 

[markjay]

I often wonder about the validity of these surveys.

Firstly, owner's satisfaction is directly linked to expectations. One might be very happy if his mundane marque only ever developed the one fault in its first year, but furious if the same happened to his Merc.

Secondly, more sophisticated car will always have more things that can go wrong. A car loaded with electronic gizmos is incoherency less reliable than a white van with wind-down windows and a FM radio. So the two are not directly comparable. Yes they have very basic cars and very clever one in the same survey.

Thirdly, the results are relative. So a marque that has improved in absolute terms over the past year may still go down in the ranking simply because another marque improved more. In short, in theory even the lowest entry may prove to be reasonably reliable i.e. of satisfactory quality in absolute terms. Unlike say NCAP, there is not common standard that the survey measures cars against. So while with NCAP we know if a car is safe enough, with reliability survey all we know is that one marque is more reliable than the other (with the two previous comments), but not what it means in the real world, as there is no 'minimum acceptable reliability' benchmark.

 

[raymont]

I hate these surveys, or maybe it's the way they are reported.

What does breakdown mean? Is it something, no matter how minor, going wrong, or is it something that leaves you immobile by the side of the road?

As others have said more sophisticated cars have more to go wrong so more failures would seem likely.

Figures are from Warranty Direct so presumably relate to claims. Owners of high end cars are quite likely to be interested in those cars and will claim for every little thing they can. People who buy 'white goods' cars such as most Toyotas will probably ignore minor failures that a Porsche owner would want to see fixed.

Need to take account of the mileage of the car during the period of warranty cover when considering the claims rate not just total mileage.

I suspect that, broadly, the findings are correct but would like to see a much better analysis. Suppose that's too much to hope for from most a journalists.