Press: MOT reliability findings 2024

Headline findings

• 28.5% of cars aged 3 to 20 failed their MOT first time in 2024, across 30,771,766 tests.
• Failure rates climb steeply with age: 13% of cars fail their first MOT at three years old, 31% at ten and 42% at fifteen.
• The most reliable popular car is the Porsche 911, 62% less likely to fail than the average car of the same age and mileage. The least reliable is the Renault Zoe, 61% more likely to fail than the average car of the same age and mileage.
• Of the most common cars on the road (200,000+ tests), the BMW 3 Series has the best MOT record and the Renault Clio the worst.
• BMW is the most reliable major make (200,000+ tests; score 135) and Renault the least (77).
• The most common single reason for failure is “Position lamp: not working”, in 2.5% of tests.

Most reliable car in each class

• City carsVolkswagen up!Score 109, 20.3% failed first time
• SuperminisHonda JazzScore 113, 25.9% failed first time
• Family hatchbacksAudi A3Score 124, 24.9% failed first time
• Large family carsVolkswagen PassatScore 122, 28.6% failed first time
• Executive carsBMW 5 SeriesScore 157, 20.3% failed first time
• Sports carsAudi TTScore 141, 22.5% failed first time
• Small SUVsAudi Q2Score 156, 9.9% failed first time
• Family SUVsVolkswagen T-RocScore 157, 9.1% failed first time
• Large SUVsAudi Q5Score 153, 16.6% failed first time
• People carriersVolkswagen TouranScore 110, 32.4% failed first time

Among models with at least 50,000 tests. Each class page ranks every model.

What the score means

Older, higher-mileage cars fail more often, so raw failure rates flatter newer, less-used models. Our score compares each model's MOT failures with what we'd expect for cars of the same age and mileage: 100 is average, 125 means a fifth fewer failures than expected, and 80 a quarter more. Only models with at least 2,000 tests are ranked.