May 3, 2008

Britain’s highest and lowest annual mileage cars were announced yesterday. there were few surprises that the Mondeo, a fleet car favourite, was the highest with an average annual mile count of 15,483 miles. The top five was dominated with Executive favourites; the Saab 9-5, Renault Laguna and VW Passat were the next three in the list. The Seat Alhambra came in fifth with an average of 13,988 miles, a good indication of it’s cruising ability.

Warranty Direct compiled statistics from more than 50,000 cars over the last 10 years to provide much more accurate details than the benchmark 12,000-mile annual average traditionally used when buying a used car.

The least used cars were the city slickers such as the Micra, Lupo and Seicento, which can often feel a little out of their depth on the open road and as a result are confined to urban landscapes. The Daewoo Matiz was the car that did the fewest miles with just 6968 clocked up on average. There were a couple of surprise entries in the ten least used cars, with the Mercedes SLK and BMW Z3 clearly spending more time on the driveway than the highway, with average mileage of just 7,425 and 7,518 miles respectively.

“This kind of information could prove invaluable when buying a used car,” said Warranty Direct’s Duncan McClure Fisher. “For example, you may find a four-year-old Nissan Micra with 30,000 miles on the clock and think it’s a low mileage machine but in reality it’s just the average. With a bit of shopping around you could probably find even better.”

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