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Motorists who have gone big on Porsche sports cars and SUVs are now looking away.
The premium German brand has just been named the most unreliable automaker in a report that analyzes breakdown rates, repair costs and days off the road for all major manufacturers.
The extended warranty provider, Warrantywise, scored Porsche a measly 35.1 out of 100 in its reliability index, which is based on data from more than 131,000 cars driving in the UK.
And it’s not the only expensive brand to make the list of the top 10 performers when it comes to reliability…
We don’t tell porkies! Porsche has been named the most unreliable car brand by Warrantywise. See if the brand you drive was among the 10 worst performers
‘Joining Porsche is a range of manufacturers of premium luxury passenger cars; proving that despite a high price tag, even for a used car, luxury cars can also cost owners more in the long run,” says Warrantywise.
The index gives each car an overall score based on a number of factors.
These include the cost to make repairs, how often they encounter problems and how many days they are in a garage to be repaired.
Luxury brands dominate the ranking of the most unreliable brands. Porsche, Land Rover, Jaguar, Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Volvo in the worst 10 performers is proof that price is no guarantee of reliability
The data only represents cars that are out of their factory warranty, meaning the minimum age for the sample is three years old. The maximum age for cars included in the analysis is 10 years.
All information has been collected from 131,000 car policies with the company in 2021 and 2022.
While the premium German maker took the unwanted crown as the least reliable brand, the highest repair bill for a Porsche encountered in the past two years wasn’t the most expensive ever.
Warrantywise said it had to pay a whopping £10,784.60 to get a customer’s Porsche repaired, but that paled in comparison to a Land Rover that came with a garage note of £23,889.53 – that’s almost the price of a brand new Volkswagen Golf.
Land Rover and Jaguar rank second and third, respectively, in the ranking of the most unreliable brands. And some car repair bills were astonishingly expensive
With cases of such huge repair costs, it’s no surprise that the British are next in the list of ten most unreliable brands.
The Range Rover was named the least reliable car by Warrantywise in the summer, contributing to Land Rover as a whole scoring a reliability score of just 40.2/100.
Sister brand, Jaguar, took the third position with a reliability score of 48.2.
The most expensive Jag to repair was also more expensive than any Porsche, with an unreliable turbocharger on one of the British cars costing £16,990.02 to fix.
Alfa Romeo, which doesn’t have the best historical record of making reliable engines, finished fourth from the bottom in the ranking, with premium German brands BMW and Mercedes close behind.
Volvo finished ninth from bottom, provided safety and reliability don’t always go hand in hand.
The Swedish marque was flanked by Vauxhall and Mitsubishi to round out the ten worst-performing brands.
Lawrence Whittaker, CEO of Warrantywise said that while luxury brands offer a premium price, their suite of advanced technology makes them harder and more expensive to repair if something goes wrong.
‘Premium prices do indeed lead to premium costs, according to the data in the Reliability Index,’ he explains.
And with more technology in high-end cars than ever before, we suppose it’s only natural that they need a little more TLC than usual.
“As the concept of luxury has expanded and become more available to a wider audience, there is clearly still a strong demand for high-end supercars.”
Last month, Warrantywise provided us with the list of ten manufacturers with the best reliability records.
Honda led the ranking with a score of 96.8/100, ahead of Toyota and Suzuki.
In fact, the ranking of the most trusted brands was a very East Asian affair, with Kia, Hyundai and Mazda also among the top performers.
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