Mike T.

The ADAC, Germany's largest auto club, has released its breakdown statistics for 2002.

The numbers on the chart are represent the number of breakdowns per 1000 vehicles. The green colour means better than average, yellow is in an average range and the red is YIKES - look out!

Mike T.

note the differences...

dswildfire

is there a note on increase in vehicle population? because some of those numbers seem to increase by a standard amount, i.e. more cars equals more potential problems. but some of those jumps are bad.

Matt230K

It's per 1000 cars, so it doesn't matter how many thousands they sell, it's how many breakdown on average out of 1000.

Hey Mike, those Peugeot's don't look too good.

dswildfire

right, but if you sell more cars, you have more possibilities for breakdowns to occur. like maybe in the batch of the first 1000, only 10 breakdowns occurred, but say in the second, there were 30. if that second batch were never sold, the rate would be 1%, instead of 1.5%. just saying that with a smaller sample size, results can be less accurate.

Elendil

What has me suprised is the A4 showing considerably more reliable than the C Class and 3 series.

What qualifies as a 'break-down' and are these numbers consumer reported?

Interesting info, Mike. Thanks.

Mike T.

True, reliability has been a bugbear for Peugeot since the eighties began. I think the 403 (Columbo's car) and 404 were their best cars for reliability, totally the equals of contemporary Mercedes. Mind you, the new ones are not the worst of the worst, and besides, the C is not that far ahead

I can't complain about my 405 - it broke down once when the coil failed at 260,000 km. Now it's pushing 300,000 km.

What constitutes a breakdown for the ADAC is either a "no-start" condition requiring assistance or a breakdown while driving that is attended by one of their service personnel.

The cars counted in the survey are up to five years old (maybe 6, I can't remember) so the decline in C reliability between the 2001 and 2002 statistics is probably nicely correlated with the greater numbers of W 203 models in the C Class mix for 2002. Too bad they don't separate out the W202 and W 203. The 203 went on sale in Germany in early 2000.

Our C 230 K had an embarrasing no-start over the Xmas holidays, with many relatives in attendance to see the broken-down Mercedes. For the record

steve s

i can vouch for the s70/v70/850 class. if properly maintained...it should be fine. but on the boards, there are more problems on volvo's first fwd platform than there has been on previous volvo rwd models.

Buellwinkle

Just shows the SLK is one of the most reliable MBs. I'm surprised the C-Class is that high up, I would swear that Fiat, Renault and MBs are built to the same standards.