Buying a new car ought to be a pleasure, but the ownership experience can soon turn sour if the car develops a string of faults that keep it off the road for weeks on end or aren’t covered by its warranty and end up costing you a small fortune to put right.

So it’s worth weighing up the desirability of your prospective purchase with its reliability record. If you buy a car that’s great to drive and dependable, that smile it puts on your face will stay as the years roll by. Pick one with dubious reliability and you’ll be wishing the finance deal would end sooner so you can replace it.

That’s where the annual What Car? Reliability Survey comes in. We asked almost 13,000 car owners to tell us how dependable their car had been over the previous 12 months, revealing whether it had suffered any problems and the areas in which the trouble occurred. The fault categories are air-con and cooling system, battery, bodywork, brakes, clutch/gearbox, engine, engine electrics, exhaust, fuel system, infotainment/sat-nav, interior trim, non-engine electrics, steering, suspension and other.