I've got an FRV (2.0L petrol) and on the whole it's been pretty reliable, but have had done these repairs:

- One of the gear linkage cable rose-joints failed, making it impossible to select even (or odd, can't remember) gears. The linkage cables come as a complete unit, so have to be replaced as a whole. I luckily got a 2nd hand set off ebay as new ones are very expensive. A physically awkward job, but not too difficult (not much to remove to do it).

- New clutch. This was down to other-half's clutch-burning driving style, not the fault of the car. I managed to do this myself, saving a fortune on labour, but it did take quite a while. Managed to do it without dropping the subframe, but only just.

- The whole dashboard went potty once, and I tracked this down to a control board near the fusebox which had a faulty relay. I replaced the relay (£5) and all was fine. Would have cost £100s if taken to a garage (who would have replaced the whole board).

- The engine does get through quite a bit of oil, so you need to keep an eye on it. I suspect it's a tiny leak from somewhere, but haven't bothered tracking it down. It's certainly not burning it. Seems to be a quite a common problem.

- The alternator died once and it wasn't too bad to replace IIRC. You do need the right spanner loosen and tighten the aux belt, which sounds simple in theory, but is very awkward to reach.

- The driver's electric window can be a bit flakey when going up and down, seemlingly getting confused whether it wants to go all the way up or just go up as you hold the button.

- Replaced one of the front wishbone bushes. These do look a prone to wear. Not a difficult job if you've got access to a press (I haven't, so found it a lot harder than planned!).

- Power steering started to whine. Just needed a new rubber seal (<£1) on the pipe into the pump (it was leaking air). Relatively easy job.

Apart from that, it has been reliable and has never left me stranded anywhere. As with all cars, they do last longer when driven in a mechanically sympathetic way (not pointing fingers at clutch-burners...).

General maintenance has been quite easy. Oil changes and brake pad changes have all been a breeze.

That's over about 6 years and 70k miles. The clutch was the only major thing that could have cost a lot to fix, and that failing was purely down the driving style (she still owes me for that!) and not the car.

The internet was a great help in fixing and pin-pointing the faults, so the more people share their experiences the more time and money we can all save.

Maybe I picked the dodgy one!

Down the years I've spoken to plenty of recovery men (I've had a fair number of break downs in various cars), and they're usually a good source on info about unreliable makes and models. Afterall, they come to recover hundreds of vehicles a year, so build up a picture of what's what.

They say BMWs and VWs are no where near as reliable as their reputation. They say they aren't well looked after by their owner's as they have this bomb-proof reputation, so maintenance gets neglected. Toyotas get mentioned as particularly reliable, they rarely need recovering. Generally Japanese cars are considered very reliable.