What Car? Reliability Survey: Most and least reliable family cars
In our annual Reliability Survey, we ask readers to rate the dependability of cars aged up to five years old. Here we list the most and least reliable family cars in the UK...
Family hatchbacks are the bread and butter of the car world. They remain popular with private buyers and company car drivers alike, despite the rise in demand for SUVs.
That means there are plenty of used examples to choose from, but as our Reliability Survey data shows, not all family cars will provide problem-free motoring. In fact, this class had the one of the lowest average score of all the classes in this year's survey, with a score of 91.1% for cars aged up to five years old.
How we compiled the survey
The latest What Car? Reliability Survey, conducted in association with MotorEasy, is the result of a massive data-crunching exercise. We gathered ownership information from 21,732 motorists, by asking them to tell us about any faults their cars had suffered in the previous 24 months.
For every car that went wrong, we asked how much it cost to repair and how long it was off the road – using these two pieces of information we created reliability ratings for 199 models from 31 brands.
To add more detail for each model and warn potential buyers about common faults, we also noted where the faults occurred, asking owners to choose from one of 14 different component areas. This year for the first time we also asked electric vehicle (EV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) owners to tell us about any issues with the batteries and motors of their vehicles.
For this story, we've pulled out all the data is for family cars aged up to five years old.
