British motors – as unreliable as the British weather?

If there’s 1 issue you can rely on in Britain, it’s the unreliable climate.

Prepare for rain and the sun will be cracking the flags. Leave the home without a brolly and the downpours will be Biblical.

And if the findings of the newest Warranty Direct Reliability Index are something to go by, British motors are just as temperamental.

Information breakdown

The Index looks at information from more than 50,000 live Warranty Direct policies and prices them across 4 categories:

• Frequency of failure


• Expense of repair


• Duration of repairs


• Average age and mileage

The typical score is 100 – and UK tends to make of car notched-up a effectively-above-typical of 209. Which is bad news, truly, since the more dependable the motor, the reduced its score. So the UK’s high score puts it clear bottom of the 8-nation table of most reliable manufacturers.

At the other end of the scale, Japanese brands proved to be the most dependable – they were the only tends to make to obtain a below-typical score.

Here’s how these benefits break down (you see what I did there?):

Axle to grind

The findings show that axle/suspension difficulty is the most common fault for UK brands, accounting for more than a quarter (26%) of all recorded malfunctions. Axle and suspension troubles also featured most frequently across Japanese (25%), American (23%) and Italian (29%) brands.

Electrical faults were also a big dilemma, accounting for about a quarter of faults in French (29%) and Swedish (26%), German (24%) and South Korean (22%) brands.

Extended warranty

The figures are based upon Warranty Direct’s own warranty claim charges for vehicles that are no longer covered by manufacturer warranties. This implies the information can be slightly skewed since some firms offer you warranties that run longer than the common 3 years.

This indicates information from South Korean brands like Hyundai and Kia, as well as Toyota of Japan and the USA’s Chevrolet, will not function till they are 5 or even 6 years old, which means there’s a higher likelihood of standard put on and tear.

Brands on the run

On the face of it, these benefits suggest the UK automobile business is in a bit of a state – not only is the UK score more than twice the supposed RI average, but the reason it’s so higher is down to underperformance from 2 of its most prestigious brands, Jaguar and Land Rover.

However, due to the fact these brands are deemed among the top marques in motoring they’ll always be highly sought right after, regardless of whether the suspension is likely to go after a handful of years.

And this does not just apply to certain brands as the very same notions are often applied to nations –Germany is a watchword for engineering excellence, but it came sixth in the table.

State of the nation

David Gerrans, Warranty Direct managing director, stated: “Though the automotive sector has many blurred lines now in terms of countries of origin, the average consumer maintains particular preconceptions about automobile brands and the nations that generate them. ‘German reliability’ is an oft-utilized phrase, but as demonstrated here, the country’s output as a entire doesn’t  match up to its close neighbours, the French, whose vehicles as a complete are a lot more dependable.”

It should be remembered that car makers throw their nets far and wide, which means that Japanese car you’re knocking about in is more likely to have been manufactured in the north east than the Far East.

And so the higher-scores accomplished by Japan’s Nissan and Honda bode effectively for the Sunderland-made Qashqai and the Swindon-created Civic – and the UK motor manufacturing market as a whole.

British motors – as unreliable as the British weather?