VehicleScore research
VehicleScore used car data report 2026
VehicleScore’s 27 September 2026 census covers 14,163,118 MOT pass/fail tests on 1,181,609 vehicles. The paid-check cut has 82,073 vehicles with a known finance result, and the same count with a known write-off result. The figures describe cars people asked VehicleScore to check. They are not the UK fleet.
Five figures worth quoting
- MOT tests passed 78.5% of the time. At ages 0–2 the rate was 87.4%. At 15 or over it was 71.3%. Detail: pass rate by age.
- Tyre comments appeared on 81.4% of vehicles with an MOT history. Only a minority of those comments were failures. Detail: common MOT problems.
- 15.6% of 82,073 vehicles with a known finance result had a finance marker. At ages 0–2 the rate was 42.3%. Detail: outstanding finance.
- 13.6% of the same-sized write-off denominator, 82,073 vehicles, had a CAT marker. CAT N and CAT S dominate. Detail: write-offs and CAT S and CAT N.
- 4.9% of 1,136,102 vehicles with two mileage readings had a later reading that was lower. That is not a clocking rate, and there is no model ranking. Detail: mileage discrepancies.
MOT pass rate by age at the test
What the MOT file is actually counting
22,807,263 comments matched a normalisation rule. 977,519 were skipped because their type was not a fail, advisory, minor or PRS. 3,449,886 did not match a rule. Issue rates include advisories. Failure counts are published beside them, because a common comment and a common failure are different lists.
The model pages exist where an age-and-mileage comparison still left a large, repeated gap. The Qashqai’s track-rod comments, the Fiesta’s ball joints, the 208’s exhaust comments (mostly not failures) and the Clio’s coil springs (mostly failures) are the four that change what a buyer should look for. Pass rates for large models, age-standardised and explicitly not a reliability ranking, are published separately.
Finance, write-offs and salvage are paid-check facts
Finance and write-off share a denominator of 82,073 vehicles with a known result, from 88,517 reports, latest report per registration. The finance marker rate falls from 42.3% under three years old to 0.9% at 16 or over. Premium makes stayed higher after age standardisation. That analysis is in the finance article, including the decision not to publish an unadjusted “most financed models” table.
Write-off markers do not fall in a straight line with age. The lowest band is ages 3–5, at 8.7%. Among CAT-marked vehicles, CAT N is 48.7% and CAT S is 45.1%, and those percentages overlap. Salvage flags were present on 8.5% of 83,712 vehicles with a known salvage result. 1,626 vehicles had a salvage flag and no CAT marker. The two signals are not substitutes.
The report is the sample. The check is one car.
Enter a registration to identify the vehicle and open its free score and MOT history. Finance, write-off categories and salvage records are in the paid Hidden History check. Nothing on this page is included in the free result.
Where the numbers live
Each detailed article has its own aggregate CSV. This report does not duplicate those tables. The downloads are linked from the articles below.
Related VehicleScore research
Methodology
Job 2026-09-27.1, snapshot 27 September 2026. MOT figures come from the MOT cache of vehicles checked through VehicleScore. Paid figures come from history reports, deduplicated to the latest report per registration, and only where the relevant result was known. Mileage figures need two valid readings.
Intervals, where an article quotes them, are Wilson 95% intervals. Age standardisation is direct standardisation to the mix in the dataset, described in the article that uses it. No registration or other personal data is in the public tables. The sample is not a random draw of vehicles on the road.