An online car garage and repair marketplace has revealed that drivers could save considerable money if they opted for the small Volkswagen Polo over the larger Golf.
The website analysed more than 300,000 data points to reveal which hatchback cars cost the most to maintain across three best-selling brands: Volkswagen, Vauxhall and Ford.
WhoCanFixMyCar.com found that when looking at the most common repair jobs, the Volkswagen Polo had the lowest average repair cost of £214.05.
The Ford Fiesta is the second cheapest at £230.07, followed by the Vauxhall Corsa at £238.21.
Larger car models, Focus, Astra and Golf, are consistently more expensive to repair than each brand’s smaller counterparts, Fiesta, Corsa and Polo.
The Volkswagen Golf is considerably more expensive to maintain than the Volkswagen Polo, with repairs costing 21 per cent more on average.
Ford and Vauxhall have a much smaller cost gap between models, the Vauxhall Astra is just eight per cent more expensive than the Corsa, and the Focus is just one per cent more costly to repair on average than the Fiesta.
The Volkswagen models are more expensive on average for routine maintenance such as car batteries, brake pad replacements and servicing.
Cambelt replacement costs
The Golf in particular is also pricey for some non-routine repairs such as exhaust repairs and cambelt changes. When WhoCanFixMyCar.com analysed the percentage of jobs posted by service type, it discovered that 13 per cent of Volkswagen Golf jobs were for a cambelt change, which is more than double the sitewide average across all other vehicles, and is five per cent higher than the Ford Focus and six per cent higher than the Vauxhall Astra.
The average age of a VW vehicle for a cambelt change on the site is five years, whereas it is ten years for a Vauxhall and Ford car.
Cambelt replacement costs based on the make and model of a car can be found here.
Vauxhall was revealed as the most expensive manufacturer for a handful of larger repair jobs such as clutch replacement, head gasket and gearbox repairs.
A Vauxhall gearbox repair is 27 per cent more expensive than Ford and 17 per cent more expensive than Volkswagen.
Gearbox repair costs based on the make and model of a car can be found here.
WhoCanFixMyCar.com is an online car garage and repair marketplace connecting more than 11,800 garage and repair centres with drivers around the UK.
The site has 1.2m users and recently processed more than 155,000 quotes through the site in one month.
Alistair Preston, co-founder of WhoCanFixMyCar.com, said: “We decided to compare the best selling hatchbacks because often drivers struggle to decide which model to purchase.
“The cost of maintenance is increasingly becoming a larger factor in the purchasing decision, so we believe it’s useful to know which of the UK’s popular hatchbacks are the most expensive to maintain.
“Although it’s pretty tight between the brands in terms of average maintenance cost, there are some big differences when you look a little closer.”
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