So Who Makes The Most Reliable Cars?

When I was a nipper, if something had "Made in Japan" stamped on it, you knew it was cheap rubbish. Then, as the Modern Romantics made way for Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the Japanese slowly and quietly sorted out their quality issues and started to build good, cheap, boring cars, the most prolific of which being the many guises of the Toyota Corolla.

Since these were now gaining a reputation for not breaking down, they lost their cheap image and started to put up their prices. This left a nice little niche for the Koreans closely followed by the Malaysians. Remember the excitement of seeing "Made in Korea" on the back of your radio-cassette player? No, me neither.

Any road up, nowadays, I tend to think of cars as follows:

Japanese: Reliable, Boring
Italian: Faulty Wiring, Rusty
French: Stylish, Break down a lot
German: Prestige, Expensive, Reliable Image
American: Big, Fast in a straight line, Cheap Interiors
Korean: Cheap but Reliable
Malaysian: Slightly cheaper than Korean
British: Foreign-owned, More reliable than in the past

Of course there are exceptions to prove all the rules - you couldn't call a Nissan Skyline or Subaru Impreza boring. Lamborghini are part of the VW/Audi Group and have the engines and knowledge that go with that. My Mercedes was built in Germany in 1999 but had many issues shared with Mercs of a similar age outsourced to America and South Africa - I had to superglue on the air-vent handles that fell off and had fuel sender issues resolved under warranty and an expensive battery replacement done out of warranty. Americans are now testing their new cars at the Nürburgring with a view to appealing to European customers.

Reviews of new Renault, Peugeots and Citroens report a massive increase in quality but only time will tell - I still see quite new Lagunas and Meganes being tended to by the Recovery Services.

By getting into bed with the Japanese, the French have been upping their act - comparing the current Nissan and Renault ranges show a lot of cars that look identical apart from the badges - probably because they are. The Vauxhall plant in Luton produce Vauxhall, Opel, Nissan and Renault vans on the same production line.

Similarly, the Toyota Aygo, Peugeot 107 and Citroen C1 are all effectively the same car, built on the same line in the Czech Republic. Oops - this means that now two French names are now subject to the same recalls that are currently embarrassing the World's largest car manufacturer, Toyota.

Toyota claim that the "sticky-brake-pedal" syndrome is not dangerous as long as you get it fixed if you start to notice the problem - that is assuming your local Toyota dealer will have the capacity to handle your case since they are now starting a massive recall programme. This is on top of a floormat-impeding-on-the-pedals recall and now a Prius Braking Issue which has allegedly led to some crashes in The States.

Overall, the recalls are expected to cost Toyota a couple of billion dollars worldwide to remedy. This comes as they just announced a $1.68bn profit for the last Quarter of 2009 following larger losses. The bigger impact, though, may well be on the reputation of the Toyota name.

I suspect, since Toyotas, and Japanese cars in general, tend to keep going for years, that they will soon get over this. But only time will tell.