Most unreliable car brands 2025
There's no such thing as a car with guaranteed excellent reliability, unfortunately. But existing owners' collective experiences can give a strong indication about which brands produce the most - and least - reliable cars to inform our purchasing decisions.
Our annual Honest John Satisfaction Index surveys thousands of readers about a variety of key ownership criteria to help determine the most reliable cars as well as the ones that have proved to be woefully unreliable.
We've further combined this data to see how each brand performs based on our readers' first-hand experiences, which presents an interesting picture of which are best for overall line-up reliability and which have demonstrated unrealiability across their ranges.
Here then are the most unreliable car brands.
1. Alfa Romeo
Reliability rating: 76.67%
Alfa Romeo has a long-standing reputation for producing fabulous looking and great to drive cars that's the envy of most other brands — but its age-old record for producing unreliable models is not something they covet. For context, Alfa Romeo's score from our readers of 76.67% satisfaction for reliability of models such as the Alfa Romeo Giulietta and Alfa Romeo Giulia, which places it last in our league, compares with an average across all brands of 89.38%. A disappointing result for Alfa's owners, Stellantis.
2. Jeep
Reliability rating: 82.31%
This least reliable cars ranking, as scored by HonestJohn.co.uk readers, doesn't make for pleasant reading for Stellantis as another of it's brands - Jeep - is in second-bottom position. While Jeep's garnered a reputation for producing a line-up of go-anywhere SUVs, our survey suggests that it's more of a question of how long they'll keep going, especially for drivers of the compact Jeep Renegade, which scored poorly for reliability.
3. Vauxhall
Reliability rating: 84.53%
Given that in the individual model range reliability rankings our readers scored its Vauxhall Corsa and Vauxhall Mokka as the worst and third-worst for reliability, it's not a surprise to find Vauxhall near the foot of the rankings when it comes to dependability across its whole model range. Its position also means that for brand reliability the three lowest positions have gone to a trio of Stellantis marques - there's clearly work to be done if the situation's to improve in 2026.
4. Mercedes
Reliability rating: 86.03%
It's another poor showing in the annual Honest John Satisfaction Index for Mercedes, particularly with our readers who drive the previous-generation Mercedes C-Class as well as the current shape of Mercedes A-Class models. For an historic brand such as Mercedes with a repuation not that long ago for thoroughly over-engineering its cars, any low scores for reliability are especially disappointing.
5. Peugeot
Reliability rating: 86.26%
Peugeot fails to hit the mark when it comes to reliability, with the French brand scoring another lowly average in the 2025 Satisfaction Index - and the fourth Stellantis marque in the bottom six. Most of our readers' complaints were related to the Peugeot 2008 compact SUV and it's larger sibling, the previous-generation Peugeot 3008, with concerns about general build quality and the cost of remedying unreliability issues.
6. Land Rover
Reliability rating: 86.26%
It's a poor showing for Land Rover in the 2025 Honest John Satisfaction Index when it comes to reliability. Most of our readers' gripes were aimed directly at the Land Rover Discovery Sport, now Land Rover's oldest model and ripe for replacement. On a more positive note, newer models, including Range Rover-branded ones, are performing much better in the dependability stakes.
7. Fiat
Reliability rating: 86.50%
While Fiat has improved from third to eighth-worst for overall brand reliability according to our readers, that step in the right direction doesn't exactly feel like a reason to celebrate for the Italian marque or its Stellantis parent company. Most of our readers' reliability frustrations are liked to the ageing combustion-engined Fiat 500 as well as the closely-related Fiat Panda - cheap it seems, doesn't equate to cheerful in these cases.
8. Ford
Reliability rating: 87.37%
While only one Ford - the Ford Focus - made the bottom 10 for individual model reliability, the brand itself hasn't shone overall thanks to disappointing ownership experiences for our readers with the Ford Fiesta, Ford Kuga and the now discontinued Ford Mondeo. Build quality niggles are one issue, but a key source of frustration for those surveyed was the cost associated with cambelt replacements on the EcoBoost petrol engines.
9. Citroen
Reliability rating: 87.35%
Appearing in a list of most unreliable brands isn't an accolade any automotive marque craves, but for ninth-from-bottom Citroen it represents the sixth marque from Stellantis to appear in the ranking, with many mechanical parts shared between them. Interestingly, no individual Citroen model performs terribly, its more that most of its models fall below average according to our readers' feedback - they're particularly peeved with the cost of fixing the variety of reliability woes.
10. Renault
Reliability rating: 88.30%
Renault finds itself just ahead of fellow French brand Citroen here, but this is an improvement on last year's result when Renault finished second from bottom. Its latest cars do seem to be a step up in quality and the brand has made significant improvements to existing models like the Renault Clio and popular Renault Captur. Only time will tell if this makes a difference to Renault's reliability ratings.
How can I make my car more reliable?
