Audi A3: unreliable yet an award winner?

I found the used car reliability feature in your April issue very interesting. I was surprised by the Audi A3’s low 40% reliability score, although I believe owners are the best people to give honest opinions about their vehicles.

Later on in the same issue, your Our Cars section lists the Audi A3 as a rival to the Volkswagen Golf and states that it’s your Used Car of the Year.

This seems very odd. Shouldn’t you take reliability into account when selecting used car awards? Chris Burton WHAT CAR? SAYS…

The two articles refer to two different generations of the Audi A3. The car in the reliability feature is the version produced from 2003 to 2013, while the one that is our Used Car of the Year is the subsequent model, which was on sale from 2013 to this year.

Owners told us that diesel versions of the older A3 suffered with a high proportion of faults, 22% of which were related to the engine.

We do take reliability into account when choosing our Used Car of the Year award winners, and the newer A3 has a much higher reliability rating of 96.7%, making it the ninth most dependable family car of the 31 models that were featured in our most recent survey.

You can read the full survey results for cars up to five years old at bit.ly/2019reliability-survey.

DIESEL DIRGE

In our survey of older used cars, the least reliable family cars were all diesels.the Mk2 Audi A3 was joined by the 2004-2011 Ford Focus and 2003-2009 VW Golf.