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Kia were owned by Mazda who are owned by Ford.
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Lexus are not a seperate company but are Toyota.
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When I asked a mechanic's advice before buying my Almera, he said "buy anything, as long as it's Japanese". He reckons a Honda or a Nissan will be more reliable than a VW or even a BMW! Bottom of the pile are Fiats.
I've only ever owned Japanese cars, and only sold my first one after the engine started running poorly and I couldn't fix it for longer than a few days (it was 16 years old!). My mother currently has a Vectra which has had numerous electrical faults which cost big money to fix. Not surprised at the comments about Daewoo - the nubira is essentially a Vauxhall Vectra, and suffers the same niggling faults.
In Australia, where people buy cars for reliability rather than image, Hyundais are VERY popular, as are Kias (Hyundai owns Kia). Out there, you see the odd Citroen and Peugeot, but never a Fiat - coincidence?! Aussies who need a reliable 4x4 won't buy Landrovers either - Toyota Landcruisers and Nissan Patrols are the big sellers.
I'd agree that Japanese cars are the best, and Korean cars are nearly as good (they started off as copies of Jap cars - the Kia Pride is really a Mazda 121, and those Malaysian Proton things were all Mitsubishi Lancers). Don't buy a Korean car new, unless you like wasting money on depreciation - most larger Jap/Korean cars with low mileage have been an old grandad's runabout. Buy a five-year-old Honda Accord with low mileage (there's some about with only 20-odd thousand on the clock!) and it'll be in "as new" condition for a fraction of the new price!
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The Mazda 121 was a re-badged Fiesta and was built by Ford in Spain.Early Hyundais were Cortinas built under license.
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The Mazda 121 was a re-badged Fiesta and was built by Ford in Spain.
Only the ones in the mid-late 90s.
The earlier ones were Mazda in-house designs. In fact, the 80s 121 was in reality a rebadged Kia Pride, as they were made in Korea under license. This put Kia in good stead for the future, and mid-90s Kias are one of the industry's best-kept secrets, being Mazdas they are in the main very reliable but pretty much worthless (they also went through a rough patch quality-wise in the late 90s as the parent company collapsed, and were bought up by Hyundai -- early-90s Prides commonly still have little rust, but the 98-2000 cars are rotboxes). Hyundai's cars have been reworked Mitsubishi designs but they diverged in the mid-90s. Even today Hyundai (and by extension newer Kia) engines are very close to Mitsubishi designs. Hyundai employ a large number of retired Japanese engineers in their R&D sections.
>>Early Hyundais were Cortinas built under license.
*Very* early Hyundais. By 1983 (when they started to export) the cars were Mitsubishi-based.
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The American magazine, Consumer Reports, in their annual "Auto Issue" (April 2006), has a league table for reliablity of various makes, looking at 5 year old cars manufactured in 2000 or thereabouts.
Toyota and Honda (incl Lexus and Acura) at the top, with other Japanese brands like Mazda and Nissan following. Hyundai were about average - pretty much the same as Ford (USA). (Volkswagen and Mercedes were pretty much at the bottom)
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What you have to bear in mind with the US surveys is that there is no Fiat, no MG Rover, no Renault, no Peugeot, who normally make up the bottom half of reliability surveys here -- they were all forced out of the Yank market years ago because Americans wouldn't put up with the faults these cars had.
Also, Ford's US cars are more dependable than the ones sold here (not that there is anything wrong with European Fords).
For Hyundai to be mid-table in that environment is a very good sign -- no matter what people say about US cars being made of tin etc, the acceptable standard is quite a bit higher over there and Hyundai are one of the few manufacturers who sell more or less the same cars on both sides of the pond.
It always amazes me though that Americans consider some German cars to be unreliable. That's taking things to extremes -- what they'd think of a 307 or Laguna diesel (which have both had their share of issues) is anyone's guess....
My opinion, and advice on this issue is to buy a Honda or Toyota if buying new, but to at least consider a Hyundai/Kia second-hand -- you're getting a car that's (a) reliable, (b) very cheap due to low new prices coupled with often heavy depreciation, and (c) usually been well-looked after under an excellent warranty by mostly more mature drivers who keep up with the service history and don't thrash their cars around. Put those together and you get a tempting package, and in the process get a car with old-school proven mechanicals which will last a long time if well looked after (and rust is not an issue really for the first 10 years on any new car now).
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I bet Columbos Pug is still going strong .
I ran a Primera sve 2.2 diesel for 5 months and I would consider it to be the biggest load of manure I have driven in a long time light years behind the mondeo I am running at the moment and it was the only car in recent times to actually break down and leave me stranded.I know these are made in Blunderland (or is at the football team)but the build quality was rubbish not in the same league as Ford,Opel,or VAG and as most Jap badged cars have never seen Japan mostly made in various parts of Europe its a bit hard to do a comparison.
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Reliable cars can be built anywhere - it's simply a matter of good quality control. Traditionally Japanese companies have been strong in this area, demanding very high standards of the cars produced at their factories, wherever they might be located. Now that Renault are at the helm over at Nissan, and have instigated various cost-cutting measures, perhaps this is the reason we're starting to see issues with the latest Nissan models?
The fact of the matter is, companies such as Renault produce cars which are statistically more unreliable, yet that doesn't seem to put people off buying them and Renault continue to be very successful. As long as that continues I can only see a decline in reliabilty across the board.
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I had numersous Fords, Vauxhalls and the odd Peugeot as company cars over teh years. Some good some not so. In the last 10-12 years I have run my own car and bar a MB in the mid 1990s thye have all been Japanses - UK apanese, Japanese Japanese and they have all been great - apart from servicing and things like brake disks, exhausts etc they have cost buttons to maintain.
Currently in the market to buy a replacement for a 5 yr old 82,000 mile Honda - I will be looking only at Toyota, Honda, Mazda and possibly Subaru.
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I bet Columbos Pug is still going strong . I ran a Primera sve 2.2 diesel for 5 months and I would consider it to be the biggest load of manure I have driven in a long time light years behind the mondeo I am running at the moment and it was the only car in recent times to actually break down and leave me stranded.I know these are made in Blunderland (or is at the football team)but the build quality was rubbish not in the same league as Ford,Opel,or VAG and as most Jap badged cars have never seen Japan mostly made in various parts of Europe its a bit hard to do a comparison.
Primera 2.2 diesel unreliable? Hardly surprising.
Largely French-derived materials and engineering.
Hence crap.
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Totally agree about the modern Japanese cars made in Europe being inferior to the real Jap cars. Most of them (older Sunderland Nissans -- Bluebirds, early Primeras, and the Hondas/Toyotas built here) are fine but a lot of them are slipping.
This is one of the areas I expect the Koreans to actually capitalise on in the coming years -- dispersed manufacturing is responsible for a lot of the problems many brands are experiencing. Korean cars are built in Korea (except the aforementioned Daewoos, built in Poland and poor as a result) and hence the QC/QA can be kept under tighter control.
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I was speaking to an guy from RAC recently and he said the new nissans - im not sure what particular model or if he meant all of them- is a very common call out for the breakdown services i assume thats since renualt have introduced their parts on nissans.
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What a fall from grace for a manufacturer which, along with Toyota of course effectively transformed automotive engineering the 1970s by producing cars that were renowned for their reliability and quality of standard equipment (eg radios fitted as standard). They did rust quickly, however, and I do recall someone telling me that this may have been due largely to the Japanese not gritting their roads 30 years ago, therefore their cars were not as susceptible to salt. Datsun, now Nissan, bucked the market trend during the '70s by turning out a new model or variant every year and the Europeans found it very difficult to compete in terms of price, reliability and design. I had a Cherry Coupe and then a Sunny and was happy to put up with the sneers from the Viva and Escort owners safe in the knowledge that I would be laughing all the way past the repair shop.
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They did rust quickly, however, and I do recall someone telling me that this may have been due largely to the Japanese not gritting their roads 30 years ago, therefore their cars were not as susceptible to salt.
Yup, in fact Japan still don't grit the roads (and incidentally it isn't true that they get less snow than we do!!!), they do things properly and get thousands of snow ploughs out each day to clear the roads.
Datsun, now Nissan, bucked the market trend during the '70s by turning out a new model or variant every year and the Europeans found it very difficult to compete in terms of price, reliability and design. I had a Cherry Coupe and then a Sunny and was happy to put up with the sneers from the Viva and Escort owners safe in the knowledge that I would be laughing all the way past the repair shop.
Jeremy Clarkson commented on the same thing. I recall our next door neighbours used to always buy Toyotas, while my dad had Vauxhalls, Fords, Fiats, Talbots etc. Every winter without fail we'd be pushing my dad's cars along the road, while the neighbours would just get into their Toyota and start it first turn of the key. That left a mark with me, and although I acknowledge that the above makes are much better than that now I still prefer the idea of a car with bulletproof reliability above all else. Such a shame, as you say, that Nissan appear to be slipping fast under Renault's control.
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Incidentally, it's my personal opinion that if the Japanese had got the rust problem sorted quicker, and the European governments of the 70s had played the game fairly rather than imposing punitive restrictions on imported vehicles, there would be no European car industry right now (except perhaps the German cars), such was the massive difference in quality between the junk we were putting out and the Jap stuff. It had got to the point before the quotas where I believe Datsun were the second most popular marque in the UK in any case.
And yet there are still those who won't buy "foreign" cars, meaning Far-Eastern, when they'll happily buy their foreign Euroboxes. One particular idiot who lives near me makes a point of calling my early-90s British-built Nissan (built only 30 miles from here) a "foreign" car. What does he drive? A Peugeot 406, which is not a "foreign" car apparently. Plank.
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Fiats haven't been imported into Australia for many years.
But the Italian firm has just begun exporting to Australia and using the Grand Punto as its launch vehicle.
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Having owned a 2004 Hyundai Coupe for the last 2yrs I have nothing but positive comments to make.
Build quailty is certainly an improvement on my previous cars (vauxhall / ford / Citroen ) & reliability has been 100% , can't ask for much more
Many people don't seem to consider certain cars based purely on the badge on the front, big mistake !!
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Having owned a 2004 Hyundai Coupe for the last 2yrs I have nothing but positive comments to make. Build quailty is certainly an improvement on my previous cars (vauxhall / ford / Citroen ) & reliability has been 100% , can't ask for much more Many people don't seem to consider certain cars based purely on the badge on the front, big mistake !!
Yup, I've owned a "crappy" Accent for the last 3 years and can report the same thing.
Nothing has gone wrong in 35000 miles, and nothing has broken or fallen off.
Some people may say that the perceived build quality on this model is poor, but for a car to reach 60K miles with nothing inside wearing out or rattling (the only rattles are the CDs in the glovebox, and the carpet in the boot where a tiny piece of foam has fallen off so a piece of plastic is vibrating against the metal, must get that sorted some time!!) there can't be too much wrong with the way it was screwed together. I might point out that it's passed three consecutive MOTs without issue (again, the worst "problem" the car has had at MOT was indicator bulbs insufficiently orange at 3 years old).
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I've got a 6+ year old Escort Estate-nothing has ever gone wrong with it-it's passed all it's MOT's-no problem with it's indicators-even the A/C still works well.
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"I've got a 6+ year old Escort Estate-nothing has ever gone wrong with it"
I've got an 8 month old Accord that has gone wrong.
Individual cases prove nothing, overall statistics are the only things that help. Despite our experiences, because of overall population statistics, I'd put money on the Accord being a more reliable car overall than the Escort. I hope. Otherwise I bought the wrong car.
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Out of interest - here's the list of top 10 manufacturers regarding reliabilty, Hyundai is higher than perhaps the top 2 peceived "quality" manufacturers, BMW & Volkswagen:
www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/top10.html?apc=31283390...1
Rank Car Make Index Rating
1 SKODA 50.59
2 MAZDA 52.74
3 HONDA 61.24
4 SUZUKI 61.9
5 FORD 78.68
6 LEXUS 82.59
7 HYUNDAI 84.15
8 BMW 84.95
9 VOLKSWAGEN 85.92
10 SEAT 89.22
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The problem with Reliability Index is that it's not really a reliability index...! It's actually a "cost to keep on the road" index, because it takes into account the cost of each repair. While that's fair enough, the fact that some cars cost more than others to fix when they do go wrong (hence Mitsubishi and Subaru not there) means that the index is inherently skewed when looking solely at reliability. It may cost more to repair a minor problem on a Subaru than it does to repair a gearbox on a Vauxhall, for example.
But, despite this, the Far-Eastern manufacturers still dominate, despite being more expensive to repair. Says a lot really. Ford is there near the top, statistically, because their cars are perfectly tolerable, and cheap to repair when they do fail. But note that being cheaper to repair is not enough to save the French cars, or the Italians, or the British.
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> But, despite this, the Far-Eastern manufacturers still dominate,
Sorry, meant to say "Far-Eastern and German-engineered".
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Subaru sell a lot of 'performance' turbo'd cars which get used very hard. They are extremely reliable, but when once does go bang it tends to be a major blow-up involving engine, turbo etc. and cost £1000's to fix.
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I was wondering if anyone knows what the ratings mean on reliability index ???
Other reliability surveys i have read are easier to understand eg a rating of say 90 would mean 90 percent of cars are fault free however i dont know hoiw the figures are made up on the reliability index.
I wasnt surprised that it included costs as any other surveys i have seen has Toyota in the top 5.
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