Yellow second hand cars are among the most likely to have hidden defects, a report claims. 

The global survey found that yellow vehicles are one of the riskiest colours to buy, with 14 per cent having some kind of defect such as covered-up repairs, 'clocked' mileage or inadequate paperwork.

Some of the best-known examples of yellow vehicles, such as Mr Bean's Mini and Del Trotter's Reliant van, do little to contradict the theory.

Only gold and purple cars, which are much rarer, were more problematic according to the statistical analysis which involved more than 800 researchers across the world.

The safest colour to buy was Orange with just eight per cent of vehicles having some kind of problem, the survey by community website Kaggle found, with coupes and convertibles more likely to have defects than saloons.

The results were determined by a computer model which incorporated industry data on car sales, auctions and models to predict whether a car was a good or a bad purchase.