The people I talked to had 306/7s and 406/7s, so same price range as golf/Passat etc.

Seen this? 2010 JD power survey from here.

Couldn't they just measure breakdowns/part-failures over a 5yr period for once. It'd be interesting to see the difference…

I think someone does, but I didn't see a breakdown of it by manufacturer, just the top 10 cars. I thought it interesting that the two most common hybrids on sale were in the top 10, despite people moaning about how unreliable they'd be.

No, they are not all crap. Reading the forums (briskoda is a pretty useful site) it seems that way but people only post when they have problems, it would be pretty boring if everybody wrote 'my car didn't break down today' type threads (unless it was an alfa forum).

I quite like mine, it is about as quick as you should 🙄 need to go on public roads and does around 55mpg no matter how I drive it, I bought it new (bit of an impulse buy) over 3 years ago and have had 27K trouble free mileage out of it. They do need decent front brake pads though to make the brakes feel like they are going to stop you.

I don't think hybrids are unreliable – just mostly hateful.

The new Honda cr-z does look interesting though.

At the moment I think a good diesel is still as good/better than any hybrid in terms of driver enjoyment/mpg/environmental impact.

However buying a new car is pretty bad news "footprint" wise. Getting a new car to save a bit on tax and mpg isn't exactly the greenest (or cheapest) way of living. Take a vast amount of resources to build a new car and costs a lot of money. Better off looking after what you have IMO.