DriveTribe
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

We’ve all been there. It is a Saturday morning, you are driving along a country road with the family in tow, ready for a day of cycling, running, wearing ponchos, sniffing leaves and all sorts of general outdoors-ness. The bikes are on the roof rack, the dog is in the back. Everything is going wonderfully.

And then, out of the blue, your car begins to fall apart beneath you. The bumper comes off. A wheel dislodges itself and rolls away. The headlights explode. The bike rack goes flying. The wing mirrors somehow end up on the back seat. It is an absolute disaster — your car has let you down once again.

Mercifully, this epidemic of motoring catastrophes can now be tackled head-on thanks to the stellar work of the heroes over at WhatCar.com. They have compiled a survey detailing the best and worst large and luxury SUVs by reliability so that you can have confidence in your weekend wheels.

Stealing the limelight in first place is the inexplicably lovely Toyota RAV4 with a whopping reliability score of 99.6%. Owners who took the survey reported just one area where problems occasionally cropped up — engine electrics — but all cars concerned were covered by warranty and returned to full working order within a day, and only a tiny minority reported having a problem in the first place.

That must be why 1 in 3 RAV4 owners said that reliability was one of the things they liked most about the car. The Toyota is closely followed by the BMW X5, whose score of 98.3% is respectable, and then some. Only a few cars had faults and all remained driveable and were fixed for free within a week.

Other cars making up the top 10 include the Audi Q5, who also managed to stay on the road despite a few minor fault areas, along with the Volkswagen Touareg, the Hyundai Santa Fe, the Volvo XC60 and the Land Rover Discovery.

Reliability for large and luxury SUVs survey results:

1 Toyota RAV4 (2013–2018 99.6%

2 BMW X5 (2013-present) 98.3%

3 Audi Q5 (2017-present) 96.3%

4 Volkswagen Touareg (2010–2018) 95.8%

5 Hyundai Santa Fe (2013–2018) 94.6%

6 Volvo XC60 (2008–2017) 94.5%

7 Land Rover Discovery (2004–2017) 92.8%

8 Mazda CX-5 (2012–2017) 92.1%

9 BMW X3 (2011–2017) 91.5%

10 Ford Kuga (2013-present) 91.4%

11 Skoda Kodiaq (2017-present) 91.3%

=12 Honda CR-V (2012–2018) 90.9%

=12 Mercedes-Benz GLC (2015-present) 90.9%

14 Kia Sorento (2015-present) 90.4%

15 Porsche Macan (2014-present) 90.1%

16 Land Rover Discovery (2017-present) 85.9%

17 Jaguar F-Pace (2016-present) 85.1%

18 Volvo XC90 (2015-present) 84.8%

19 Nissan X-Trail (2014-present) 84.4%

20 Audi Q5 (2008–2017) 82.1%

21 Range Rover Sport (2014-present) 75.8%

22 Land Rover Discovery Sport (2015-present) 74.7%

23 Range Rover Evoque (2011-present) 73.2%

24 Ford Edge (2016-present) 70.7%

25 Range Rover (2013-present) 67.3%

More on SUVs:

Why did our project Subaru BRZ explode after less than a week?!

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A 100% score on this is very impressive…

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Read more posts by Jason Reed in Shifting Lanes on DriveTribe the new website by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

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