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Basis for Research
This report examines the mechanical reliability of 88,048 cars and
vans on the Lex fleet run between 1 December 1996 & 30 November 1997.
The oldest vehicles in the survey were registered in 1993 on L plates,
while the newest sport an R-registration plate.The report analyses the mechanical faults experienced when a vehicle has broken down and has been tended to by the Lex Breakdown and Recovery service. After each breakdown, the exact problem with the vehicle is recorded, enabling Lex to build a picture of the reliability of its entire vehicle fleet. To make this a true Vehicle Reliability Survey, all driver induced faults such as punctures and road traffic accidents have been taken out of the statistics. To ensure the Reliability Survey does not penalise those manufacturers such as Ford and Vauxhall which have around 35,000 vehicles on the Lex fleet between them, we have generated a Mechanical Breakdowns Per Hundred Vehicles (MBPHV) figure for each manufacturer. The MBPHV figure has been reached by dividing the total number of mechanical faults by the number of the vehicles on the fleet multiplied by 100. This has been rounded to the nearest decimal place. For instance, looking at the Fiat data, the total number of mechanical faults is 268. Divide this by the Fiat fleet size of 2,444 and then multiply it by 100. This equals the MBPHV figure of 11.0. Unless the manufacturer had more than 300 vehicles on the fleet, they were not selected for the 1998 Survey. This year for instance both Alfa Romeo and Hyundai have been included because they have passed that figure. We feel that more than 300 gives a statistically valid sample. There are 23 manufacturers in the Survey compared to 21 in the 1997 Survey. |
