VehicleScore research
MOT pass rate by vehicle age
In VehicleScore’s MOT dataset, 87.4% of pass/fail tests on vehicles aged 0–2 were passes: 862,833 of 987,040 tests, from 837,223 vehicles. At age 15 or over the pass rate was 71.3%, from 1,731,755 tests.
That is a test pass rate. It is not the share of cars that have always passed. A vehicle is counted in every age band in which it was tested, so the vehicle column sums to more than the 1,181,609 vehicles in the dataset. The full set is 14,163,118 tests, with an overall pass rate of 78.5%.
MOT pass rate by age at the test
Pass/fail tests by the vehicle’s age when it was tested. GOV.UK says a car must have its first MOT by the third anniversary of registration.
| Age at test | Vehicles | Tests | Passes | Failures | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0–2 years | 837,223 | 987,040 | 862,833 | 124,207 | 87.4% |
| 3–5 years | 1,087,761 | 3,585,599 | 3,026,802 | 558,797 | 84.4% |
| 6–8 years | 984,182 | 3,401,842 | 2,697,847 | 703,995 | 79.3% |
| 9–11 years | 787,413 | 2,690,199 | 2,018,462 | 671,737 | 75.0% |
| 12–14 years | 515,772 | 1,716,880 | 1,240,465 | 476,415 | 72.3% |
| 15 or over years | 305,068 | 1,731,755 | 1,235,121 | 496,634 | 71.3% |
The 0–2 band is mostly a first test
GOV.UK says a vehicle needs an MOT by the third anniversary of its registration, and then around each anniversary. Some vehicle types are tested earlier. In this dataset the 0–2 band has 987,040 tests and 837,223 vehicles, about 1.18 tests per vehicle. At ages 3–5 the same ratio is 3.30, and at 15 or over it is 5.68.
The high pass rate at 0–2 fits a band full of first tests, before the annual wear that later tests record. We did not flag “first MOT” as its own field. The test-per-vehicle ratio and the legal timing are the evidence for that reading.
The drop does not stop at the first test. From 3–5 (84.4%) to 6–8 (79.3%) to 9–11 (75.0%) the rate keeps falling, then flattens: 72.3% at 12–14 and 71.3% at 15 or over. The last step is 1.0 percentage point, on more than 1.7 million tests in each band.
The age band is not the car
A 12-year-old car in this dataset failed more often than a 4-year-old one. That still does not tell you the result on the registration you are about to buy. Enter it to open that vehicle’s MOT history.
Mileage moves with age, and the pass rate moves with both
Tests taken at 1–29,999 miles passed 87.5% of the time (2,167,278 of 2,478,304). Tests at 120,000–149,999 miles and tests at 150,000 miles or more both passed at 71.2%. Those two bands are separate. They happen to round to the same figure.
Pass rate by mileage recorded on the test. Zero-mile and unreadable readings are excluded. A vehicle is counted in every mileage band in which it was tested.
| Mileage at test | Vehicles | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–29,999 | 735,595 | 2,478,304 | 87.5% |
| 30,000–59,999 | 989,549 | 4,646,870 | 81.0% |
| 60,000–89,999 | 797,317 | 3,631,381 | 75.4% |
| 90,000–119,999 | 479,044 | 1,984,785 | 72.3% |
| 120,000–149,999 | 224,366 | 844,640 | 71.2% |
| 150,000+ | 100,477 | 532,663 | 71.2% |
Age and mileage describe a lot of the same cars. A high-mileage test is usually an older car, and an older car has usually covered more miles. This cut does not separate the two. It does not support a sentence of the form “mileage causes failures” or “age causes failures”.
The comment-level analysis holds both still. That is why the common MOT problems page compares models inside an age band and a mileage band together.
Fuel, inside the same age band
Hybrid tests passed more often than petrol or diesel tests inside the same age band. At ages 9–11, hybrid tests passed 81.2% of the time (40,484 tests) and petrol tests passed 75.1%. At 15 or over the hybrid figure is 73.3% on 1,835 vehicles, against 71.9% for petrol.
Electric samples shrink quickly. At ages 0–2 there were 16,825 electric vehicles in the band. At 15 or over there were 698. A fuel gap that remains after age is held roughly constant is still not a fuel effect on its own. Mileage, use and maintenance are not in this table.
The age-and-fuel file was recounted after the main census export. The job manifest says 20 of the original rows did not match the test totals, so the published age-fuel rates are that later recount, not a patched copy of the 13:15 UTC file.
Related VehicleScore research
Methodology
Snapshot 27 September 2026, job 2026-09-27.1. A pass/fail test is a test with a pass or fail result. Age is years from the vehicle’s first-used date to the test. Bands are 0–2, 3–5, 6–8, 9–11, 12–14 and 15 or over. Mileage bands use the reading on that test, and ignore zero or unreadable readings.
Because one vehicle’s history crosses several bands, do not add the vehicle counts. The pass rate’s denominator is tests. VehicleScore’s checked vehicles are not a random sample of UK MOTs.