Rapidly advancing electronics have increased the likelihood of more complicated and expensive faults, say researchers in Britain looking at the most common car parts to fail. Photo: dpa
Batteries, alternators and coil springs are the most common parts to fail on a car, according to recent research.
Warranty Solutions Group (WSG) analysed data exclusively for Britain’s Car Dealer magazine from more than 500 warranties from every manufacturer and worked out the most common issues and faults from each car brand.
The top claims were alternators, which accounted for 12%, followed by batteries at 6.06% and water pumps at 3.79%.
Start-stop functions were said to put strain on alternators and the same for batteries, however, due to Britain’s pothole problems, coil springs were the most common in suspension failure.
The most costly fixes came from McLaren, costing on average more than £9,000 (RM53,598), Ferrari at £4,166 (RM24,810) for a gearbox issue and Bentley at £2,799 (RM16,669) for air compressors.
The survey also conducted a test to see the motor manufacturer with the cheapest average repair cost and most reliable model. The manufacturer with the lowest average repair cost was Toyota with an average repair of £331.40 (RM1,974), followed by Skoda at £313.67 (RM1,868), and then Hyundai at £362.76 (RM2,160).
Martin Binnee, WSG operations director said: “The build quality has improved significantly across all car manufacturers over the last few years and generally vehicles have become more reliable.
“However, rapidly advancing electronics have increased the likelihood of more complicated and expensive faults.”
The data collected also found the most reliable used cars on sale with it working out how many claims of a certain model appeared in a policy.
The winner was the Honda Jazz at just 2.28%, followed by the Toyota Yaris at 2.98% and in third place was the Toyota Aygo at 3.80%. – dpa
