Mazda has come out as the least reliable car manufacturer in Australia, according to a new study by Scrap Car Comparison that analysed the data of over two million Google searches.
When we encounter a problem with our car many of us turn to the internet for help, and this new study got under the bonnet of which particular car models are causing their owners to frequently turn to Google for troubleshooting assistance.
The investigation analysed breakdown, fault and repair related search volumes for almost 500 different car models. The data was then cross-referenced with the sales figures for each model to achieve a fair comparison.
The resulting Crap Car Comparison Index reveals that Australia’s second best-selling auto-manufacturer is the least reliable, with nearly 12,000 Google searches logged last year from Mazda owners looking for advice around a fault in their car. BMW, Audi and Volvo all feature in the top ten manufactures you can rely least upon, but before German and Swedish engineering is written off as no longer being reliable, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen fared well in the list, sitting outside of the top 15 thanks to their comparatively low Google searches for problems vs. their high yearly sales.
Across all counties analyzed, BMWs and Fords ranked highly as unreliable manufacturers, while in Australia in particular, popular brands such as Subaru and Kia also made the top 10 least reliable list. Notably, the biggest selling manufacturer in Australia, Toyota, is down in 15th highlighting the brand’s reliability, with plenty of sales but few owners needing to head to Google to remedy an issue!
Whilst Mazda comes out as the worst car manufacturer in Australia (according to Google search data), it’s actually the Kia Stinger that takes the podium for the least reliable car model. Plenty of Mazda models are also on the list, contributing to why Mazda is deemed the worst manufacturer, with the CX-30, CX-9, CX-5 and Mazda 3 all causing owners to regularly Google what’s gone wrong with them.
Scrap Car Comparison’s research also looked at which cars were troubling owners overseas, and found that Vauxhall is the least reliable brand in the UK, while Ford is the unfortunate winner in the USA.
Dan Gick, managing director of Scrap Car Comparison said: “As we see many of the same makes and models getting scrapped on a daily basis, we wanted to find out whether this stacked up against car reliability. The results seem to show that it does, as the Google search and sales data revealed Ford as second-worst in Australia, the third least reliable brand in the UK, and most unreliable in the USA – and they have been the most scrapped cars in the UK every year since 2017. We hope the results of our Crap Car Comparison Index can help car buyers in their decision making when looking for their next car.”
The research from Scrap Car Comparison used Google’s Keyword planner to search volumes for keywords relating to car trouble (i.e. [car model + warning light], [car model + problem], [car model + breakdown], [car model + repair] and [car model + fault] for all of the major car brands’ specific models made in the last 12 months. Around 500 different car models were used in the analysis.
The volume of searches was cross-referenced with the number of cars sold before the final index score was calculated.
