Showing posts with label MoneySupermarket. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MoneySupermarket. Show all posts

Monday, 10 December 2012

Honda named "Most Reliable Car Manufacturer"

I'm sure that when purchasing a new car, its "reliability" is a factor that, alongside design, economy, safety, and cost, we all consider quite important...  We would be daft not to, particularly if it is the primary way we get to work, drive the kids to school, go shopping, etc...

However, quantifying this "reliability" can be quite difficult, with most of us relying on a manufacturer's reputation, often decades old, and things our friends say, good and bad...

A survey carried out by Warranty Direct and MoneySupermarket.com has tried to add a touch of science to the proceedings... and named Honda as "the most reliable car manufacturer", with Suzuki and Toyota coming second and third, in, perhaps unsurprising to our "reputation" and "gossip" reliant team, a clean sweep for Japanese manufacturers.

The overall order is dictated by each manufacturers Reliability Index (RI) score, which takes into account the average number of and cost of failures which occur to each model produced by a manufacturer. This is based on data collected through thousands of car warranty policies which are held by Warranty Direct customers with vehicles which are less than 10 years old and have under 100,000 miles on the clock.

The average RI score is 100 and the lower the score, the more "reliable" a manufacturers vehicles tend to be. However, it should be noted that by taking into consideration average repairs costs, more expensive luxury brands, perhaps with fewer, but more expensive faults, are going to be disadvantaged.

Interestingly, Honda didn’t have it all their own way, with the Kia Picanto being statistically "the most reliable individual model".

Honda also missed out on the title of manufacturer with the "cheapest average repair costs", with this accolade being taken by Ford. The fact that Honda didn’t feature in the top ten of this list, serves to make their overall victory all the more impressive!


Thursday, 4 October 2012

UP! at the top of the charts.



The Volkswagen UP! (their exclamation mark, not ours..), the Seat Mii, and Skoda Citigo have garnered another trophy by winning the inaugural....

....MoneySupermarket Car of the Year Competition

This is a new annual competition where some of the most highly-qualified and knowledgeable motoring experts on the Web are asked to vote for what they believe to have been the 10 best cars of the past 12 months and UKMotorTalk was delighted to be chosen by MoneySupermarket to be one of the websites selected to help judge the competition.

Each judge’s nominations were awarded a score between 1 and 10, with their top vehicle being given 10 points and their 10th nomination being awarded a single point. MoneySupermarket then collated all of the results and came up with a definitive top 10 which best represented the opinions of the overall motoring community.

The UP!, Mii and Citigo were a universally popular choice thanks to their stylish design and fuel-efficient nature, but they only just narrowly pipped the impressive BMW 320d to overall honours by a meagre two points.

The Range Rover Evoque was a strong third, proving to be another popular choice with judges thanks to its trendsetting styling which is something of a radical departure for Land Rover. And, in the interests of transparency, it was also the top choice of the team here at UKMotorTalk.

Perhaps the Range Rover’s failure to obtain overall top spot owes more than a little to the rising price of fuel at the pumps, which has resulted in fuel efficiency proving to be an increasingly important area of differentiation and one on which many of the judges appeared to place a greater emphasis.

Overall though, German manufacturers dominated the competition, picking up more than double the amount of points of the Japanese car brands who were a distant second.

British brands ranked a respectable third, owing largely to the popularity of the Range Rover Evoque and the radical new Vauxhall Ampera which came in 6th. Vauxhall was the most popular British manufacturer in terms of points accumulated in 8th place with 4 separate Vauxhall vehicles having been nominated for inclusion by judges.

MoneySupermarket have produced the following infographic highlighting the overall top ten in what it hopes will turn out to be an annual competition:



So, congratulations to Volkswagen, Seat and Skoda on this strong showing for their new baby - It’ll be interesting to see whether the trend next year continues to reflect the ever-increasing popularity of frugal little cars such as the UP!



UKMT