The Hyundai i30 has been named top car in the ninth annual Driver Power 2010 survey for satisfaction and reliability, as voted for by 23,000 readers of Auto Express. The i30 beat last year's winner, the Jaguar XF, for the top slot, while the Skoda Octavia came third ahead of parent company Volkswagen's new Golf.Skoda retained its position as best manufacturer overall. The second-generation Toyota Prius was voted number one for both reliability and ease of driving, the Fiat Panda took the honours for low running costs, the recently-replaced Land Rover Discovery was tops for practicality and the Lexus IS beat all the opposition in terms of build quality.
All the manufacturers named above will be happy about this, but there will be some grumbling elsewhere. The Ford Focus had only a middling result, finishing 51st overall, though at least that was better than Vauxhall managed, with its Astra and Corsa (admittedly previous models rather than current ones) propping up the bottom of the table in 99th and 100th positions respectively.
Despite this, Vauxhall was not the lowest-rated manufacturer. That was Peugeot, largely on account of the poor results achieved by the 207 and 307.
[Source: CarKeys.co.uk]
