This is the most unreliable new car

The Volvo XC90 has voted the least reliable car by the independent British consumer organization, WhatCar. Between the ages of three and five, a survey of 47,000 motorists shows that 74% of all models had a fault.

Volvo is synonymous with making safe cars, and in recent years it has proudly called itself ‘premium’, but WhatCar research proves that hooking up with the ‘Big Three’ from Germany is more than just shouting that you are very good.

Three to five-year-old versions of the Volvo XC90 have an error rate of 74%, according to the research. This was the highest error rate of any car in any age group.

The survey includes reliability data from 280 models from a total of 35 different car brands. The current XC90 is the second generation of the giant 4X4.

The model has been on sale since 2015. Not only were there many breakdowns, the failure rate of these cars was also sky-high in the past 12 months.

One in six XC90s left their owners in the lurch in the past year, the British newspaper Daily Mail calculated. According to WhatCar, behind a large number of failures are mainly problems with production quality.

At the top of the error list were problems with the exhaust or emission control system. Around 16% of owners said that their XC90 had this problem.

Also high on the list of faults were the cooling system (13%), exterior door handles and locks (13%), interior door handles and locks (11%), problems with the fuel system (11%), with the interior trim (11%) and with turbochargers (11%).

Drivers of newer XC90’s (zero to three years) said they weren’t overly troubled by problems, suggesting the potential misery begins when the cars are just out of warranty.

Incidentally, unreliability in SUVs such as the XC90 is not uncommon. In WhatCar’s rankings, seven of the ten least reliable models are up to three years old, medium to large SUVs. For the age group of three to eight years, this is three out of ten.