Consumers’ Association: ‘Asian cars most reliable’

The Consumers’ Association has investigated the experiences people have with different car brands. The Asian brands are clearly the best.

The Consumentenbond has made an inventory among Dutch car owners how often they were confronted with unexpected problems. 8,000 respondents indicated whether they had a breakdown or had to go to the garage for problems in the period from June 2019 to June 2020. Owners could also report how satisfied they were in general. This resulted in a satisfaction score per brand. The cars are built in 2010 or later and the owners also had to report the mileage. This should provide a clearer picture of the unpredictability of defects.

Lexus comes out as the absolute topper. That brand gets an 8.8. This pushes the parent brand Toyota off the lead, although Toyota is still doing very well with a shared fourth place score of 8.3. Subaru (2nd place), Honda (3rd place) and Mazda (4th place) complete the top 5 of best brands. The best non-Asian brand turned out to be Mini. That is with an 8 in joint seventh place, together with Mitsubishi. The Consumers’ Association therefore repeats the advice that it says it has been giving for years: if you want a reliable car, it is best to buy an Asian.

Setbacks and climbers

For the first time since the Consumers ‘Association the so-called’defect investigationTesla has been taken. The American manufacturer does not debut too strongly. With a 6.3 it is in joint 22nd place. According to the Consumers’ Association, this has partly to do with updates that in some cases make things worse than solve things. There is a separate mention for the Model 3, which, according to the Consumers’ Association, receives the most positive reviews of all Teslas.

Tesla shares 22nd place with Skoda and Volkswagen and that is not the best position. Only Citroen (6.2), Peugeot (6.1) and Alfa Romeo (5.7) are more disappointing. Seat was the most disappointing brand last year and did not even get a pass. Now that is the ‘best’ brand of the Volkswagen Group that was included in the survey and is in shared 15th place with a 6.6. Fiat, which was still in 20th place last year with a 6.1, is now doing better with a 6.7 in 14th place.

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