Buying a Used Car? These are the Models Which Have Been Best Maintained

Vehicle maintenance costs can be a key purchase decision when looking to buy a used or new car. Considering the components that are required to be regularly maintained through regular servicing - from tyres and batteries to brake pads - the cost of maintenance can easily add up for a vehicle. If you’ve ever wondered whether your car is among the models most requiring maintenance in the UK, you’re in luck.

The experts at Kwik Fit have been busy creating a Maintenance Index that sheds light on the most disproportionately maintained cars at Kwik Fit centres across Great Britain, where over two million of the UK’s car owners take their car each year.

Covering the first half of 2024, this comprehensive analysis reveals which car models have been keeping mechanics busiest this year so far. Read on to discover if your car makes the list, and learn more about the regional variations and the specific maintenance requirements that different car models face.

What do we mean by ‘maintained’?

Nailing down exactly how to determine ‘the most maintained’ car was foundational to our analysis. We’ve defined maintained as internal sales of products at ETEL (our parent company) that relate to ‘Exhausts’, ‘Shock Absorbers’, ‘Wheels’, ‘Windscreens’, ‘Batteries’, ‘Brakes’, ‘Steering + Suspension’, ‘Transmission’, ‘Components’ or ‘Engine Management’.

This is because, when vehicles are brought into Kwik Fit centres in need of maintenance, customers purchase the relevant service or parts from us to enable our technicians to carry out the work in-house.

Our ‘Maintenance Index’ Explained

The metric we have used in our index is the ratio of the proportion of ‘maintenance’ jobs for customers in that area, to the proportion of registered vehicles for that make/model family combination in the same given area.

Using Volkswagen as an example:

If the Volkswagen Golf formed 2% of all of Kwik Fit customer maintenance in Q1/2 of 2024 for customers from Kent, and comprised 0.5% of all vehicles registered to an address in Kent in our baseline from late 2023, then the Volkswagen Golf would have an index score of 4.00 for Kent.

As such, the data does not show the most maintained cars in an area, but rather: which are the most disproportionately maintained model families at Kwik Fit from an area – irrespective of which of the hundreds of Kwik Fit centres they were brought into across Great Britain. It is the most disproportionate car, for customers from that area, as standardised against the general car base from that same area.

For more details on our exact method, feel free to skip ahead to our ‘Methodology’ section.

Our core findings

Below is a selection of the core findings from our analysis — from ‘repeat offenders’ to the ‘most maintained’ vehicle make and model.

Manufacturers

7 manufacturers achieve the highest index value in 10 or more areas. These were (from highest to lowest number of areas ‘won’):

The Hyundai i30 reigns supreme

The Hyundai i30 was the most disproportionately maintained car model at Kwik Fit or Tyre Pros centres across the UK between January and June 2024 — taking 8 areas in total. These included: Rhondda Cynon Taff, North Yorkshire, North Northamptonshire, and North Somerset.

Other vehicles rounding out the Top 10 (including ties) for the maintained category include:

• The Nissan Note (7 areas)
• The Citroen Berlingo (7)
• The Citroen C1 (7)
• The Mazda CX-5 (6)
• The Ford Ka (6)
• The Hyundai i10 (6)
• The Vauxhall Mokka (5)
• The Peugeot 107 (5)
• The Kia Picanto (4)
• The Peugeot 2008 (4)
• The Honda Jazz (4)
• And, the Citroen DS3 (4)

How does your area fare?

Using the map below, you can explore regional patterns in vehicle maintenance, tracking which models were brought into a Kwik Fit centre for maintenance the most disproportionately in relation to how many of those models are on the roads near you.

Let’s do a deep dive into some specific locations using Southwark, Redbridge, and Derbyshire as examples.

In Southwark, the top 3 most disproportionately maintained vehicles at Kwik Fit for maintenance in the first half of 2024 were the Mini Countryman, the Mazda 2, and the Citroen C1, deviating slightly from the top 5 makes of Citroen, Peugeot, Mazda, Ford, and Hyundai.

In Redbridge, on the other hand, the Ford Ecosport was the most disproportionately maintained vehicle, despite it being discontinued after the 2023 model year. Online sources state that the reasons for discontinuation were primarily dwindling sales numbers, but also customer dissatisfaction with engine performance and overheating.

Lastly, in Derbyshire, the Mazda 2 reigns supreme with a maintenance index of 3.06 — making it the most disproportionately maintained in this area by far.

How we did it

The Kwik Fit data scientists were kept busy with this one, producing a ‘Maintenance Index’ to track which cars are most served by Kwik Fit relative to their general commonality on UK roads, on a region-by-region basis.

The analysis examines overall sales data for the first half of 2024 (1st Jan 2024 to 30th June 2024 inclusive), counting an individual selection of purchases as 1 ‘job’. The sales data used is from the consumer retail division of European Tyre Enterprise Limited (‘ETEL’) – the parent company behind consumer brands ‘Kwik Fit’ and ‘Tyre Pros’, both of which feature in the sales data analysed in this ‘Maintenance Index’.

Regional divisions

The regional scale used was Upper-Tier Local Authorities (‘UTLA’) – what most people would identify as ‘counties’ in most parts of South and East England. In other parts of Great Britain, these are equivalent to other forms of regional catchment (e.g. London Boroughs), which is why the scale is referred to as UTLA by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Avoiding issues with vehicle commonality

A baseline population was calculated by segmenting the proportion of each car model ‘family’ (EG: Ford Focus, Ford Fiesta etc). Using filtered DVLA data from late 2023, containing anonymised data for every vehicle registered in the UK, the baseline population was produced, which ends up with the core measure of ‘% of total vehicles on the road’, calculated for each car family for each UTLA area in Great Britain.

Necessary exclusions

To prevent niche car models from coming out as the ‘most’ disproportionate in this relative analysis, only car models in the most common half of all vehicle models for that area have been considered. Similarly, UTLAs where the most disproportionate ‘maintained’ model had only 3 or less customer engagements at Kwik Fit have been excluded for statistical disclosure and statistical integrity reasons. For this reason, many (typically small/remote) British areas do not have a ‘most maintained’ car published.

Customers who did not provide a valid postcode to Kwik Fit when getting their maintenance done have been fully excluded from this analysis — as have cars in the DVLA data without a registered post district. Postcodes were converted to Latitude/Longitude pairs using public ONS postcode data.

Avoid unexpected maintenance with Kwik Fit

As we've seen, certain car models are more prone to maintenance than others. Whether your vehicle made the list or not, regular maintenance is essential for avoiding unexpected maintenance and keeping your car running smoothly.

Here at Kwik Fit, we offer our customers a comprehensive range of servicing options to help you stay ahead of potential issues. This includes Free Vehicle Safety Checks, Wheel Alignment Checks, and Free Brake Inspection, too.

Don't wait for problems to arise - book your next service with Kwik Fit today, and ensure your car is protected from unexpected maintenance.

So, was your car on the list?