Vehicle owners up and down the country are increasingly being faced with costly repairs to suspension as a result of the poor state of the nation's roads, a new study has shown.

According to figures compiled by insurer Warranty Direct, as many as one-third of cars need to undergo suspension repairs each year, with some models more likely than others to be in need of this type of maintenance on a regular basis.

Warranty Direct managing director David Gerrans commented: "Any vehicle driven on damaged, poor surfaces regularly or used for commuting on routes littered with speed bumps will eventually come to grief. London is particularly bad for the latter.

"The roads are as bad as ever but some cars are affected terribly, with components like bushes, track rod ends, drop links, springs and dampers all susceptible. Instead of cheap runabouts, luxury vehicles and stiffly sprung sports cars are most prone to breakdowns – with the exception of the Honda S2000."

The organisation's findings revealed the model of vehicle most likely to require repairs to its suspension is the Audi RS6 built between 2002 and 2011, with a 38.37 per cent chance of suspension failure each year.

Models that fared almost as poorly in the company's research were shown to be the Mercedes-Benz R-Class (2006 to 2013), with a failure rate of 30.67 per cent, and the Fiat Multipla (2004 to 2010) at 29.05 per cent.

Other vehicles making the list were the Jaguar XK (1996 to 2006), Bentley Continental GT (2003 to 2011), Mazda 5 (2005 to 2010), Mercedes-Benz CL (2000 to 2007) and the Chrysler 300C (2005 to 2010).

However, the news was not all bad for some manufacturers, with each of Honda, Toyota and Isuzu recording suspension failure rates of less than three per cent per annum across their entire model ranges.

Potholes remain a major cause of road deterioration in the UK and earlier this year, the chancellor George Osborne announced an additional £200 million was to be funnelled into the repair of potholes up and down the UK's transport network, with the ambitious goal of repairing as many as 3.3 million of these hazards during this financial year.

The announcement coincided with the publication of research from motoring organisation the AA, which revealed 40 per cent of road users in the UK believed that the state of local roads in their area had deteriorated during the first three months of 2014 in comparison to the same time in the previous year.

Furthermore, 29 per cent of respondents rated their local roads as being in "terrible condition".

AA president Edmund King responded to the report by saying that many roads are literally crumbling away due to a lack of sufficient maintenance by local authorities.

Several harsh winters and a reduction in many local authority budgets for road repairs have created a situation where significant attention now needs to be paid to tackling the blight of potholes and ensuring the UK's roads are fit for purpose.