Which? finds Land Rover 'hitch'

The Land Rover Discovery has won awards

The Land Rover Discovery has come bottom of a poll of car reliablity by the Consumer's Association Which?.

But the company insists its cars, including its Freelander which was just off the foot of the table, are reliable.

The survey of association members found most cars are more reliable than for last year's study.

We would say Land Rovers are reliable

Mike Gould
Land Rover

But questionnaires returned by 69 Land Rover Discovery owners suggested almost one-fifth had broken down at least once last year.

Forms were sent out to 80,000 association members and the study was compiled from the 34,000 replies as to whether cars had broken down in the last year.

The survey suggested there is often no correlation between money paid and reliability with models from Jaguar and Mercedes also apparently performing badly.

Japanese success

The best-performing models were mainly Japanese with a Saab the only European entry among the five models with 100% reliability.

The other top-rated cars were from Lexus, Mazda and Nissan.

Mike Gould, of Land Rover, told BBC News Online he took the survey seriously but maintained the award-winning cars were reliable.

"We would say Land Rovers are reliable. It was a small sample size - 69 out of 25,000 vehicles that were sold in that period.

"The feedback we are getting is that we are attending fewer and fewer vehicles - reliability is getting better."

Incidents included

Mr Gould said one-third of Land Rover breakdowns attended involved factors which the manufacturer could not be held responsible for.

"The Consumers' Association are very unwilling to give us any details."

But David Evans, a senior researcher at Which? said incidents like running out of petrol or bursting a tyre had been excluded.

He maintained the reliability report, which will be printed alongside a survey of other features in Which car? next month, was "reliable".