July 2003

- Trish Whelan

Almera Britain's most reliable

31 July 2003: Nissan’s Almera is the most reliable small family car on the road in Britain according to warranty insurer Warranty Direct’s latest Reliability Index.

The Almera scored an Index rating (calculated as cost of repair vs number of visits to the garage) of just 4.35. This compares to the small family segment average of 55.9 and 95.95 for the car market as a whole.

And, if things do go wrong, the garage invoice is likely to average no more than £79.57 after spending just shy of an hour in the hands of a mechanic.

Lying second in the small family category is Britain’s best selling car – the Ford Focus, with a rating of 22.29. Hyundai’s Accent came third with an Index rating of 23.3.

The Focus recorded a 50 percent improvement in reliability over its predecessor, the Escort, and the Citroen Xsara also improved substantially, being 66 percent less likely to need the attention of a mechanic than its forerunner, the ZX.

The bottom three in the list - which was based on analysis of 4,294 policies held by Warranty Direct for small family cars up to ten years old - were Chrysler Neon (84.92), VW Vento (73.26) and Citroen ZX (71.86).

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