Range Rover is UK’s most unreliable used car, with poor showings from Porsche and BMW too

Avoid the most luxurious models

The Range Rover luxury SUV is officially the UK’s least reliable used car — that’s according to data revealed by the extended warranty firm, Warrantywise.

Looking at cars less than ten years old and outside their manufacturer’s warranty to provide a representative sample, high-end vehicles, not just from Land Rover, but also from Porsche and BMW, made up a disproportionate part of the bottom end of Warrantywise’s Reliability Index, suggesting that the relative complexity of luxury motors could end up being a disadvantage to second-hand car buyers or long-term owners.

Sitting at the bottom of Warrantywise’s Reliability Index is the Range Rover with a score of an ignominious 20.2 out of 100 on account not just of the frequency of warranty claims, but the high cost of repairs, with the highest recorded by the firm coming in at an eye-watering £23,980. The average cost of repairs on a Range Rover, according to the Warrantywise, was £1,607, actually lower than the average for many of the other cars on the list. Because of the age range of the study, the data refers solely to the last generation of Range Rover built between 2012 and 2021.

Following the Range Rover is the BMW M3, the first of three BMWs on the list, with a score of 21.4 out of 100 followed by another Land Rover, the Range Rover Sport.

Two Porsches also made the list with the Panamera saloon in fourth place with a score of 23.4 out of 100 and the Cayenne SUV in sixth, with 24.9 out of 100.

Other cars from premium brands made up the rest of the list due to a high number of warranty claims and expensive repairs, such as the Audi Q7 and Bentley Continental GT, though perhaps slightly more surprising is a ninth place showing for the Mazda CX-5 SUV with a low score of 29.6 out of 100 and a repair bill in at least one case of £5,777.

The CX-5 has otherwise consistently placed highly in reliability surveys including, most recently, third-place finishes in Auto Express’s annual Driver Power survey of used car reliability in 2022 and 2021.

“The Reliability Index is extremely revealing of how luxury cars, which may seem like they would be reliable because of the costly price tags, aren’t always so,” said Lawrence Whittaker, CEO of Warrantywise.

“The opinion that they should be very reliable, for the price that customers pay for them, is quite a popular one, and this evaluation of our data is helpful for us to guide customers the right way when wanting to make a large purchase on a luxury car, like a Porsche.”

The results of the Warrantywise survey are another damning indictment of Land Rover quality, the brand frequently making an appearance on lists of the least reliable cars in the UK. Notable was the company’s showing in the latest 2021 What Car? Reliability Survey that polled some 16,000 car owners, looking at 27 different brands and 139 different models.

Creating its own reliability index, What Car? examined areas including air conditioning systems, battery, bodywork, brakes, engine, engine electrics, exhaust, fuel system, gearbox, interior trim, non-engine electrics, navigation systems, steering and suspension; for each fault, it asked owners how much the repairs cost and for how long the car was off the road, assembling a points-based index accordingly.

Land Rover recorded a paltry 65.3% reliability rating versus, at the opposite end of the scale, Suzuki, with a 97% rating.

The Land Rover Discovery Sport, Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery all scored lowest for reliability in their respective classes.

Nor is it a case that Land Rover’s rating comes purely as a result of exclusively producing complex, relatively high-spec vehicles: luxury brand Lexus was the second most reliable brand according to the survey, with Porsche in tenth place.

Citroën, Peugeot, Renault and Land Rover’s sister company, Jaguar, made up the rest of the least reliable brands in the What Car? survey.

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Keyword: Range Rover is UK’s most unreliable used car, with poor showings from Porsche and BMW too