Reliability tops poll of buyer concerns
Car buyers are more concerned about reliability than anything else.
A survey from BuyaCar found that 54% of people cited it as the key issue when buying a new car, even though nine in 10 car owners have a completely positive long-term experience of their latest car.
Maintaining long-term interior comfort and the affordability of future fuel costs come in joint second place among potential future concerns, both reported by one in four car buyers.
The survey also found that more than a third of car buyers report no worries at all about changing their vehicle.
Christofer Lloyd, editor of BuyaCar.co.uk, said: “There is an obvious tension between reliability issues being experienced by just over one in 10 new car drivers and worries about reliability being reported by more than 50% of car buyers.
“But there is better news in the fact that more than a third of drivers say they have no worries at all about the next car that they will buy.
“With cars becoming ever more loaded with technology it is a tribute to the quality of modern cars that only around 14% experience a problem. And it is worth remembering that faults are often misreported by complex in-car monitoring systems, so that an engine warning light symbol on the dashboard is often merely an electrical glitch rather than revealing a serious issue.
“However, it seems that worries about reliability remain stubbornly out of proportion with actual reliability.”