Japanese cars 'most reliable'

Drivers in a car magazine survey say Japanese-made cars are the most reliable.

The survey of 15,000 drivers found the three least reliable models were the Rover 800, Land Rover Freelander and Rover Mini.

Japanese cars took 18 of the top 20 places for reliability in the Driver Power 2002 survey by Auto Express.

The most reliable model was Toyota's RAV4, followed by the Mazda 626 and the Toyota Yaris.

Honda scored strongly with the Civic, the CR-V and the Prelude in the reliability top 10.

The Porsche Boxster came fourth while the Lexus IS200 came fifth.

The Peugeot 106 came fifth bottom, while the Peugeot 307 came fourth bottom.

A Land Rover spokesman said the Freelander and Discovery scored high points for practicality and that its new models will show significant improvements.

MG Rover said: "We did have quality problems with the MGF in 1995 but we tightened everything up in production and gave it a lot more focus. We pay a lot of attention to quality. Another poll found the Rover 75 came fifth out of 185 cars for overall customer satisfaction."