ACCIDENT management specialist AutoManagement has condemned as 'hopelessly inaccurate' recently published tables of average car repair costs, and renewed its call for the introduction of an industry standard test on which a comparison of repair costs could be based. David Thacker, AutoManagement's operations director, argued that reports released by VELO and the Fleet Accident Repair Group reveal more about drivers than an actual like-for-like comparison of repair costs.

'The FARG report shows the Audi A4 to be the cheapest car to repair while VELO has Land Rover as the most cost-effective manufacturer, yet any fleet manager will know these can actually be relatively expensive vehicles to repair,' he said. 'All the figures show is that the drivers of Land Rovers and Audis on the VELO and FARG fleets are not involved in many serious accidents. This is almost certainly due to the way in which these particular vehicles are used and driven.'

But John Robinson, sales and marketing director of FARG, said that the numbers of repairs involved among the volume fleet manufacturers - Ford, Vauxhall, Rover, Peugeot - made these absolutely valid, and that the difference in the severity of the accidents repaired among all the manufacturers was not significant. And Nick Gafney, VELO's group marketing co-ordinator, said VELO's repair cost tables were statistically valid, representing a broad cross section of driver ages, industries and vehicles.