Which cars pass their MOT, and which do not

The shape of it

Most cars are average. The tails are where it matters

The median ranked model sits at 73.2%, close to the national 72.3%. The interesting part is how long the lower tail runs: the worst ranked model fails roughly one test in two.

Adjusted for age and mileage

The twenty highest pass rates

Adjusted for age and mileage

The twenty lowest pass rates

Ranks count from the bottom of the table upward, so 140 is the lowest of the 140 ranked models.

What the adjustment does

The models a raw pass rate flatters most

These five lose the most ground once age and mileage are accounted for. A raw rate rewards them for having a young fleet; the adjustment asks how they would look if their cars were as old and as driven as everyone else’s.

Numbers in the shift column are percentage points, adjusted minus raw.

All 140 ranked models

The full table

Every model with observed tests across at least 85% of the national age and mileage range, in rank order. Each links to its own file, with the failure items testers recorded most often on that model.

How this was worked out

Method

What this cannot tell you

Limits

For journalists and researchers

Use this data

<p>Source: <a href="https://motfiles.co.uk/reliability">MOT pass rates by model, The MOT Files</a> — analysis of 33,143,168 DVSA MOT tests, adjusted for vehicle age and mileage.</p>

Go deeper

Behind the rankings

• Every model we hold — 854 models across 74 makes
• Electric cars: ranked against petrol cars of the same age
• The defect library: what each failure item actually means
• How to judge reliability from evidence, not reputation
• The most common MOT failures, and how to avoid them

Common questions

Which car has the best MOT pass rate?

The Audi A8, at 88.6% once results are adjusted for the age and mileage of the cars tested. That is above the national average of 72.3%. It is measured against 140 models with enough test data across the national range to be compared fairly.

Which car has the worst MOT pass rate?

The Renault Kangoo, at 59.0% adjusted, from 52,135 recorded tests. The gap between the best and worst ranked model is 29.6 percentage points, so where a car sits in this table matters far more than the national average suggests.

Why adjust for age and mileage?

An unadjusted pass rate mostly measures how old the tested cars are. Rank models on raw rates and the result is a list of which cars were bought most recently. Each model here is measured within age and mileage bands and then reweighted onto the national distribution, so it is compared against cars that have lived a similar life rather than against the fleet average.

Why are only 140 models ranked?

854 models have published pages and 262 have an age and mileage standardised pass rate, but a ranking needs more than that: it needs observed tests across most of the national range. 140 models clear 85% coverage and are ranked here. A car sold only in the last four years has no fifteen-year-old examples, and no arithmetic can say how it would look at fifteen, so it is left unranked rather than estimated. Every model still has its own failure and advisory record.

Why is a car I expected to see missing from the table?

Almost always because its fleet is too narrow to rank honestly. Expensive and low-volume cars are the common case: they exist mostly as low-mileage, well-maintained examples, so there is little or no evidence of how they hold up when old and driven hard. Ranking them anyway produces a table topped by cars that were merely owned carefully. Those models still have full pages with their own pass rates and failure records; they are just not placed in this order.

Does a low pass rate mean the car is badly built?

Not on its own. An MOT records whether a car met a legal standard on the day, so the result reflects how a car has been used and maintained as much as how it was made. Consumables such as tyres, bulbs and wiper blades drive a large share of failures and say more about upkeep than engineering. Cheaper cars also tend to be maintained to a lower budget, which the adjustment does not remove.

Can I republish this data?

Yes. The underlying records are DVSA's, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and this analysis is offered on the same terms. Attribution is a condition of that licence, so please credit The MOT Files with a link and name DVSA as the source of the underlying data.