2021 What Car? Reliability Survey

What Car? has released its annual Reliability Survey, in which its asked more than 16,000 UK car owners if their car has suffered any problems over the previous year, and if so, in which areas.

The 15 categories of fault according What Car? are air conditioning, battery, bodywork, brakes, clutch and gearbox, engine, engine electrics, exhaust, fuel system, infotainment and sat-nav, interior trim, non-engine electrics, steering, suspension and ‘other’.

“To get an indication of how serious each fault was, we also asked owners to tell us how long the car was out of action for and how much the repairs cost,” a spokesperson for What Car? said.

“The worst offenders were off the road for more than a week and cost more than £1500 to fix, while those with minor niggles were usually put right in a day or less and were often fixed for free.

“Those two factors are more important than what actually went wrong, so we used a combination of them to calculate a unique reliability rating for each model we’re told about,” they added.

The 2021 What Car? Reliability Survey contains data about 178 models aged up to five years old, from 30 brands.

The most reliable cars according to the 2021 What Car? Reliability Survey are as follows:

Rank – make – model – reliability
1. Dacia Sandero 2013-2020 100%
2. Hyundai i10 2014-2020 99.6%
3. Suzuki Swift 2017-present 99.3%
4. Hyundai i20 2015-2020 99.0%
5. Honda Jazz 2015-2020 98.1%
6. Mini Hatchback petrol 2014-present 96.9%
7. Ford Fiesta petrol 2008-2017 95.0%
8. Volkswagen Up 2012-present 94.8%
9. Renault Clio 2013-2019 94.3%
10. Kia Rio petrol 2017-present 94.0%
11. Kia Picanto 2017-present 93.9%
12. Audi A1 petrol 2018-present 92.2%
13. Skoda Fabia 2015-present 91.7%
14. Vauxhall Corsa 2014-2019 90.6%
15. Seat Ibiza 2017-present 90.5%
16. Volkswagen Polo 2018-present 80.6%
17. Ford Fiesta 2017-present 74.9%