VehicleScore research
Common MOT problems: what the records show
Across 1,181,609 vehicles with a pass or fail MOT result, tyre-wear comments appeared on 81.4%. That is 962,390 vehicles. Only 15.4% of the 3,607,709 matched tyre comments were failures. The rest were advisory, minor or PRS notes.
A comment is not the same thing as a failure
VehicleScore matched 22,807,263 tester comments to a normalisation rule, drawn from 14,163,118 pass/fail tests. 977,519 comments were skipped because the recorded type was not a fail, advisory, minor or PRS. Another 3,449,886 did not match a rule and are left out.
The rates below count a vehicle if any included comment matched the category. They also count advisories. Calling the whole list “MOT failures” would mix a blown bulb that failed the test with a note the tester was content to pass.
The test pass rate in the same dataset is 78.5%: 11,121,200 passes and 3,041,918 failures. That is a different statistic from the comment rates, and it is set out on the pass rate by age page.
Vehicles with at least one matching comment
Normalised MOT comments across 1,181,609 vehicles and 14,163,118 pass/fail tests. The vehicle rate counts a vehicle once if any test matched the rule. The last column is failures divided by matched comments.
| Comment | Vehicles | Vehicle rate | Matched comments | Of which failures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tyre wear | 962,390 | 81.4% | 3,607,709 | 15.4% (554,284) |
| Brake pad wear | 585,375 | 49.5% | 1,157,225 | 16.7% (193,434) |
| Brake disc wear | 552,124 | 46.7% | 1,329,744 | 5.5% (72,674) |
| Windscreen damage | 472,705 | 40.0% | 918,389 | 34.3% (314,890) |
| Lamp and bulb faults | 456,134 | 38.6% | 1,045,109 | 43.0% (449,165) |
| Headlamp faults | 399,933 | 33.8% | 760,726 | 39.5% (300,700) |
| Suspension arm issues | 311,034 | 26.3% | 749,613 | 14.7% (110,459) |
| Corrosion | 304,780 | 25.8% | 1,115,357 | 12.1% (134,825) |
| Exhaust | 268,383 | 22.7% | 671,212 | 20.9% (140,206) |
| Coil spring issues | 264,130 | 22.4% | 543,890 | 40.6% (220,832) |
| Ball joint wear | 217,448 | 18.4% | 437,746 | 39.5% (172,716) |
| Oil leak | 200,469 | 17.0% | 529,008 | 1.7% (8,847) |
| Track rod wear | 147,694 | 12.5% | 269,912 | 40.1% (108,315) |
| Engine warning lamp | 80,113 | 6.8% | 110,646 | 74.5% (82,381) |
| Emissions test issues | 78,557 | 6.6% | 104,550 | 77.6% (81,133) |
Checking a specific car?
These figures describe comments across the dataset. They do not tell you what is on the MOT history of the car you are looking at. Enter its registration to open that vehicle’s free score and MOT record.
Some common comments almost never fail the car
Oil-leak comments turned up on 17.0% of vehicles, 200,469 of them. Of 529,008 matched comments, 8,847 were failures. That is 1.7%. An oil leak on an MOT printout is usually a note, not the reason the car failed.
An engine warning lamp is the other way round. It appeared on 6.8% of vehicles, and 74.5% of those comments were failures (82,381 of 110,646). Emissions-test comments are similar: 77.6% of 104,550 comments were failures.
Brake discs sit in between on volume and at the low end on severity. 46.7% of vehicles had a brake-disc comment, and 5.5% of those comments were failures. Disc comments are common. Disc failures are not.
The same part means something different on different cars
A national list is a poor way to judge one model. Tyres, pads and lamps accumulate with age and miles, so an older car will look worse on almost every row if you do not hold age and mileage still. The comparisons that follow use the same age band and the same mileage band for the model and for the other vehicles.
Nissan Qashqais aged 9–11 with 60,000–119,999 miles had a track-rod comment on 30.3% of 8,232 vehicles. Other vehicles in that slice were at 6.6%. At ages 12–14 in the same mileage band the Qashqai figure was 43.6% of 4,230, against 7.5%. The detail is on the Qashqai page.
The Nissan Juke shows a related steering pattern earlier. At ages 6–8 and 60,000–119,999 miles, ball-joint comments appeared on 35.9% of 3,723 Jukes, against 6.2% of other vehicles in the slice. 59.5% of those Juke comments were failures. We have not given the Juke its own article: the finding is the same family of steering comments as the Qashqai, shifted younger.
Ford Fiestas in the 9–11 / 60,000–119,999 slice had ball-joint comments on 29.4% of 22,248 vehicles, against 9.4%. The gap was already 12.0 percentage points at ages 6–8 in that mileage band. See the Fiesta page.
Peugeot 208s aged 3–5 and under 60,000 miles had exhaust comments on 29.3% of 7,472, against 2.5%. Only 18.5% of those comments were failures. The 208 page keeps that distinction in the headline, because 29.3% is not a failure rate.
Renault Clios aged 6–8 and under 60,000 miles are the opposite case: coil-spring comments on 20.6% of 7,445 vehicles, and 89.2% of those comments were failures. That analysis is on the Clio page.
Vauxhall Corsas aged 3–5 and under 60,000 miles had windscreen comments on 28.1% of 27,066 vehicles, against 12.8% of other vehicles in that slice. 47.9% of those comments were failures. The Corsa page sets out the later oil-leak pattern, where the comment is common and the failure share is small.
What to do with a comment on a car you might buy
Read the comment type before you read the part name. A failure means the car did not pass on that item. An advisory, minor or PRS comment means the tester recorded it and the test result was decided on the failures. This dataset does not split advisory, minor and PRS from each other.
Then look at whether the comment repeats, and at the mileage beside it. One advisory on a fresh tyre is a different fact from the same line three tests running. The free VehicleScore lookup shows the MOT history for the registration you enter. It does not include finance agreements or insurance write-off categories. Those are in the paid Hidden History check.
The MOT check explains what a current certificate shows. Model-level pass rates, which are also not a reliability score, are on MOT pass rates by car model.
Look up one registration
Enter the registration to see that car’s MOT history. The rates on this page stay in the aggregate.
Related VehicleScore research
Methodology
The snapshot was taken on 27 September 2026. Job 2026-09-27.1. The scan covered 1,262,009 MOT cache documents. 1,181,609 vehicles had at least one pass or fail result, and those vehicles produced 14,163,118 pass/fail tests.
A comment is counted once per test per normalisation rule. Failure counts are the subset whose type was FAIL. Advisory, minor and PRS comments are included in the issue rate and excluded from the failure count. User-entered and other untyped comments are the skipped set. Text that matched no rule is the unclassified set.
Model comparisons require at least 100 vehicles of that model in the age and mileage slice, at least 20 vehicles with the comment, and at least 200 other vehicles in the slice. “Other vehicles” excludes the model. The slices published here also had non-overlapping Wilson 95% intervals. That is a conservative screen, not a p-value.
Mileage bands are under 60,000, 60,000–119,999, and 120,000 or more. Age is the vehicle’s age at the test. VehicleScore users are not a random sample of the UK fleet. No registration is published.