Asian Brands Top For Reliability When It Comes To Small Cars

An influential new consumer survey has revealed the No.1 cars for reliability in all categories, and for small cars it is the Far Eastern brands which are dominating the market.

The What Car? Reliability Survey looks at data sourced from 18,000 owners, scrutinising 159 different models across 31 brands. It’s regarded as one of the most dependable tests in the motoring industry, as it is the drivers of the cars who are giving the results.

There are ten different categories of car in the Reliability Survey including small/city, family, executive, luxury, small SUV, family SUV, large/luxury SUV, MPV, hybrid/electric and the coupe/convertible/sports.

In the small city car category there is some tough competition, but it is the small cars from Japan and South Korea which have cornered the market for reliability.

Toyota’s Yaris came top of the survey with a faultless 100% survey score for the third generation petrol version which came into production in 2011. An impressive four out of ten owners cited reliability as the best thing they liked about their car.

The Honda Jazz was a close second to the Yaris, with the third generation claiming 99.5% satisfaction, the second generation Jazz came in third with a score of 99.2%.

Completing a clean sweep for far eastern manufacturers in the small car top five were the Suzuki Celerio (98%) and Hyundai i10 (97.8%).

The top rated European small car was the Skoda Citigo, whilst the Peugeot 208 came last in the list of 23 small cars.

Reliability for city and small cars aged one to four years old