Meanwhile, Lexus’s mainstream sister brand, Toyota , ranks third this year, being pipped for second place (where it was last year) by Mitsubishi .

As was the case last year, overall honours go to Lexus in the brand reliability league table. Owners told us that the premium Japanese brand’s cars cost the least when it came to ifxing faults and spent the least time in the garage.

The ratings are based on all the responses for cars up to five years old for each brand, pushing Lexus and Mitsubishi to the fore even though not many of their models had big enough sample sizes to appear in the class league tables.

In the class charts, two models from European brands join a Japanese model on the podium by achieving a perfect reliability score. The Ford C-Max, Skoda Citigo and Toyota Aygo all gained a 100% Reliability Rating, with their owners telling us that not a single car had suffered a fault in the previous 12 months.

While we take our hats off to the Citigo and Aygo, it’s the C-Max that deserves the biggest round of applause. That’s because, being an MPV, it’s in a class that often gains the lowest reliability scores due to the fact that such cars are subjected to the rigours of family life more severely than most.