What Car? Reliability Survey: Most and least reliable car brands

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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How the survey was conducted

The What Car? Reliability Survey is open for responses from all drivers and car owners for six months, and it is sent out to whatcar.com readers and subscribers. 

Anyone who reports a fault on their car in the previous 24 months is asked to rate the seriousness of the issue by telling us how much it cost to repair and how long it kept the car out of action. We also ask what area of the car was involved, giving people 14 different categories to choose from. 

The data on cost of repairs and time off the road is collated for each model to create a unique reliability rating, and this is used to rank cars. The latest survey gained 21,732 responses and that enabled us to report on 178 models up to five years old from 32 different brands. 

The most reliable car brands

1. Lexus

Reliability rating 98.3% 

The luxury brand of Toyota has topped our dependability chart for seven years in a row, partly because its cars rarely go wrong, and also because when they do, its dealers fix the problems for free. 

Its star performer is the 2014-2021 Lexus NX family SUV, which has a reliability rating of 99.8%. The second and third most reliable family SUVs are also Lexus models: the current Lexus NX scores 99.4% and the Lexus UX 99.3%. 

Its previous generation luxury SUV, the 2016-2022 Lexus RX, is also a great bet if you want problem-free driving. It scored 98.6% and has a fault rate of 8%. 

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2. Toyota

Reliability rating 97.4% 

Toyota's presence in second place shows that dependability isn’t the preserve of premium brands. In fact, some of its smallest, most affordable models are the highest achievers. The 2011-2020 Toyota Yaris scored 99.3% and just 3% of its owners said their cars had gone wrong. The current Toyota Yaris isn’t far behind, with a rating of 98.6% and the Yaris Cross small SUV gets 98.0%. 

Larger models, such as the Toyota RAV4, which scored 98.8%, are also a sound choice if you’re after a hybrid family SUV.  

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3. Mini 

Reliability rating 97.2%

Mini is the highest rated European car brand for reliability, posting strong performances across its line-up. Overall, 10% of the Minis we were told about went wrong, but three-quarters of them were in and out of the garage in less than a week. The car maker paid for 94% of repairs, and owners who had to pay were charged less than £100 per fault.

The 2015-2024 Mini Clubman is its most reliable model, with a score of 97.9%, and the Mini Electric fares well, too; with a rating of 97.6% it’s the highest-scoring electric car in our survey. And if you’re after open-top fun, the Mini Convertible shouldn’t let you down with its reliability rating of 97.1%. 

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4. Suzuki 

Reliability rating 96.9%

Only 8% of Suzuki models owners told us about had any issues, and 44% of issues were resolved in a day or less and three-quarters of faulty cars were fixed for less than £200; 25% of them were put right for free. 

With a score of 96.7%, the Vitara is its most robust model, followed by the Swift on 99.5% and the Ignis on 99.4%. 

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5. Mitsubishi 

Reliability rating 96.2%

It’s a shame you can no longer buy a Mitsubishi new, but its cars continue to prove sound secondhand prospects. Only 9% of the cars reported on had any problems, with the most common causes of concern the 12-volt battery, bodywork and engine electrics. Half of the cars that went wrong were back on the road within a day.   

At model level we only have enough data to report on the 2014-2021 Outlander Plug-in hybrid, which has a fault rate of just 6% and a reliability rating of 97.2%. 

6. Honda 

Reliability rating 95.9%

Honda used to top the charts for reliability, but it has been outstripped by other Japanese brands for the past couple of years. It’s still producing dependable cars, though, such as the previous generation 2015-2020 Honda Jazz, which gains 98.5% and the newer Jazz Hybrid, which achieves 98.4%. 

Overall, 15% of the Honda cars in the survey had a problem, with the air-con system and non-engine electrics the main culprits. Virtually all faulty cars could still be driven and 40% were in and out of the garage in a day or less. Even better news for owners is that Honda covered the cost of 86% of remedial work. 

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7. Hyundai 

Reliability rating 94.3%

Hyundai just pips its Korean sibling brand, Kia, partly thanks to the robustness of the petrol and hybrid versions of the Ioniq, which gained 99.2%, and the 2015-2020 Hyundai Tucson, which has a rating of 98.8%. 

The brand’s smallest model, the i10, is almost as good as the larger motors; the current i10 scored 98.4% and the 2014-2020 Hyundai i10 did even better on 98.6%. 

Overall, 16% of Hyundais went wrong and 87% were fixed for free by the car maker.     

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8. Kia 

Reliability rating 93.8% 

Although the same proportion (16%) of the Kia models in our survey went wrong, the car maker covered the cost of 92% of repairs. However, getting cars fixed was a slower process than for Hyundai owners; 53% of Kia cars were out of action for more than a week. 

Hybrid versions of the Niro family SUV were the least troublesome, with just 5% of owners reporting a fault and the model gaining an impressive score of 98.8%. The Niro EV has been dependable too, with a reliability rating of 94.7%. The Picanto city car also fared well; it scored 97.5% and only 10% of the cars reported on had a problem.  

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9. Volvo 

Reliability rating 93.7% 

Although Volvo has a high overall fault rate of 20%, most problems are sorted out quickly and at little or no cost to owners, minimising the disruption. Around 50% of faults were resolved in a day or less and Volvo paid for 94% of the work. The  XC40 and XC60 were the brand’s best models, with plug-in hybrid versions of the XC40 the highest scorers at 99.0% with a fault rate of 7%, and petrol and hybrid XC60s almost as good with a rating of 98.0% and fault rate of 14%. 

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10. Tesla 

Reliability rating 93.6% 

The American EV brand has achieved a huge turnaround in the quality and reliability of its cars. It’s jumped from 19th place in last year’s survey to 10th position. The Model S still lags behind with a score of 83.9% and a fault rate of 41%, but the Model Y is up there with the best electric cars with a rating of 97.4% and Model 3 looks good too, with a score of 94.0%. 

Owners told us they got a great level of service when things went wrong, with 97% of remedial work done for free and 60% of cars fixed in a day or less. 

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Brand reliability for cars aged up to five years old

To read the reliability data for other car classes follow these links:

Most reliable cars in the UK
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
Most reliable diesel 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 take 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.

About the author

Claire Evans has been a motoring journalist for more than 30 years with a focus on consumer issues for much of that time. She was the advice columnist for Carweek magazine in the 1990s, and also spent six years working on motoring content for Which?.

Claire launched the What Car? Reliability Survey in 2017, and since then has helped thousands of buyers choose the most reliable new cars and SUVs, as well as the most dependable used cars.

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