Hyundai Is A High Climber In The Reliability Charts

Hyundai has soundly beaten well-respected German manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen in Warranty Direct’s survey of most reliable manufacturers in the UK – leaping four places over last year to place sixth out of 23 marques.

The Index is calculated as the cost of repair and the frequency of failure against the number of policies held. The average age of the vehicles analysed by Warranty Direct was 4.8 years old with 49,702 miles recorded and an average repair bill of £357.60.

Hyundai has an average repair bill very close to the average, and just 22 claims per 100 policies, one of the best in the entire survey. In fact the number of claims has been falling each year that Warranty Direct has carried out the survey; from 25 in 2001, to 24 in 2002, to 22 this year.

Hyundai outranks Peugeot, Nissan, Mercedes, Citroen, Volkswagen, Audi and Renault, amongst many others. Bottom of the list come Land Rover, Subaru and Jeep.

Only last month Warranty Direct found the Hyundai Accent to be one of the UK’s most reliable small cars, saying: "Hyundai's Accent stands out for praise. Placed third with an index rating of 23.3, it also has the second lowest repair bill (£103.87) and, behind the Citroen Xsara, spends the least amount of time in the garage (0.80 hours per visit)."

Also last month a survey by Which? magazine showed that Hyundai had leapt from the ‘good’ reliability category into the ‘best’ class – while Audi, Mercedes and Volkswagen had slid downwards.