Buying a new car is quite expensive without subsequently forking out hundreds or even thousands of Kenyan shillings in maintenance and repairs.
However, there is a way for prospective buyers to help avoid this by consulting reliability surveys where owners give feedback on how dependable their car is and whether they'd recommend it.
WhatCar?, a UK-based car review brand, gathered views from 29,967 car owners.
So, which manufacturer should you trust to give you a car and which ones should you avoid no matter how tempting they might be? We reveal the answers. The WhatCar? survey asks drivers to give feedback about their car's reliability over a two-year period, and the cars can be up to five years old.
Responses by drivers on the reported faults, costs incurred in fixing them and how long the exercise kept the cars off the road were the criteria used to create a unique reliability rating for each car and brand.
The most reliable brand of 2024 turned out to be the Mini, which climbed two places from last year with an almost perfect score compared to all the other five models in the report exercise.
The Mini bagged an overall score of 98.3 per cent. The former winner and seven-time champion Lexus came in second place, netting 97.9 per cent. Although the Japanese brand came second overall, its Executive Sedan (ES) took the top spot in the executive class with a 99.3 per cent score.
Suzuki, a Japanese brand too, rounded out the top three with an overall score of 97.7 per cent.
Toyota, which was second in last year’s review, climbed down three spots as Honda bagged fourth place, two spots up from last year.
BMW was the only German marque to make the top ten spot, taking home eighth place.
Notable newcomer brands into this year’s top ten included Dacia, Citroen and Renault taking sixth, seventh and ninth place, respectively.