6:49am Friday 20th June 2008
THE Swindon-built Honda Civic has been heavily criticised in the reliability stakes by the Which? Car magazine.
While Honda as a whole tops the list for being the UK's most reliable cars, the Civic, of which 150,000 a year are made at the factory in South Marston, pictured above, gets something of a pasting in the individual models' list.
"The Swindon Civic falls well short of the brand's usual reliability standards," said Richard Headland, editor of Which? Car.
"In the medium cars table it languishes in joint-bottom spot, on 82 per cent, in the medium cars table (along with the Citroën C4)."
Paul Ormond, Honda's UK head of press and PR, said: "After four strong years in the Which? survey it is obviously disappointing for us in Swindon to have slipped.
"We will be looking at what the customers have been saying and do what we have to make sure Swindon is back on top making the UK's number one cars."
The cause for the demise in the Swindon Civic could come from a fault in the handbrake when there was a model recall earlier this year.
"We shall get all the data from Which? and carry out a thorough investigation," said Mr Ormond.
"Japanese cars have always been reliable, and they're getting even more dependable."
In the UK's biggest car reliability survey, Japanese carmakers swept the board, taking the top seven spots in this year's brand reliability table.
Honda is top of the chart with a reliability index rating of 85 per cent, followed by Toyota (84 per cent), Daihatsu (83 per cent), Lexus (83 per cent), Mazda (83 per cent), Subaru (83 per cent) and Suzuki (83 per cent).
Honda's Japan-built Civic Hybrid tops the large car chart with a reliability score of 95 per cent.
While the Civic scored 82 per cent, the Mini, in which Swindon has a hand in the manufacture, gets just 78 per cent.
It's not great news for British car manufacturers across the board. Land Rover's reliability is very poor - joint bottom of the table (with the American brands Chrysler/Dodge) with a disappointing 67 per cent; Vauxhall is poor (75 per cent), while Jaguar (78 per cent) and Mini (78 per cent) are just average.
The popular Volkswagen Passat (post-2005) has the joint-lowest reliability score (with the Citroën C5) 80 per cent - in the large cars category.
Mr Headland said: "Japan continues to show the rest of the world how to make consistently reliable cars, although the new Honda Civic shows they're not infallible."
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