MOT pass rates drop with car age as you'd expect, but with some surprises
A car's MOT pass rate slides from 84.9% in its first few MOTs to a low of 66.7% at 15 to 19 years old, then climbs back to 76.4% by its late 30s. MOTs at 40 or older are left out, because most cars that old don't need one.
Reading the curve: the youngest band is mostly cars at their first MOT, which is why it sits highest: nothing has had time to wear out.
Pass rates fall fastest over a car's first 10 years, bottom out at 15 to 19, then rise again.
That rise is about which cars are still around, not better engineering: a car still going for its MOT at 30 is usually well looked after.
The line stops at 40 because most cars that old don't need an MOT.
Tyres and lights are the most common MOT problems, but tyres and brakes are the dangerous ones
This chart in particular focuses on every problem MOT testers have found on cars since the current MOT reporting structure started in May 2018: over 208 million. Advisories (things to keep an eye on) aren't counted.
Common isn't the same as dangerous. Tyres, wheels and suspension are the most common problem and the most dangerous: together with brakes, they make up 95.6% of all problems marked dangerous.
Lights and electrics are nearly as common, but only 0.5% of them are marked dangerous.
The best makes stay on top as their cars age, but the gap closes
A make can look good just because lots of its cars are nearly new. So we also compared these 12 makes at the same ages, 10 and 20 years old. The same three stay on top, but the gap between the best and worst shrinks by more than a third by the time cars are 20.
What this tells you: BMW, Toyota and Land Rover come out on top whichever way you look: BMW is first overall and when their cars are 20 years old, and Toyota when their cars are 10 years old.
Further down, age matters more: Volkswagen drops from 5th to 9th at 20 years old, while Vauxhall climbs from 9th to 6th.
Four makes (Ford, Vauxhall, Peugeot and Renault) pass more MOTs at 20 than at 10, probably because the cars still going at 20 tend to be the better-kept ones.
When the cars get to 20 years old, 9 of the 12 makes pass roughly 2 in 3 of their MOTs, so for an older car, how it's been looked after is likely to matter more than the badge.
Worth remembering: this only covers passing the MOT. It doesn't tell you what a car costs to keep on the road, or about overall reliability.
Every make has its own weak spot
Of all the problems MOT testers find on each make, the kind that shows up more than it does on other cars.
18.5% and 18.4% of their problems. All cars: 13.0%
34.7% and 34.5% of their problems. All cars: 29.4%
10.6% and 10.5% of their problems. All cars: 6.8%
6.9% and 6.3% of their problems. All cars: 3.7%
Fiat: Tyres, wheels & suspension 33.6% (Mini 21.4%)
All cars: 12.3% and 29.4%
Lamborghini: Emissions, noise & leaks 12.8% (Ferrari 9.6%)
All cars: 12.3% and 4.7%
This is the mix, not the amount. A bigger share of brake problems doesn't mean a Kia has more brake problems than other cars, just that brakes make up more of what's found.
We checked each pattern across cars of different ages, just to be sure.
Real mileage by age isn't a smooth climb, and a flat average hides that
The typical (median) mileage reading at each age, from over 720 million car MOTs. It isn't the steady climb a flat yearly average suggests.
Why this matters: a flat national average of 7,100 miles a year treats every car the same.
The real figures climb steeply through a car's first 15 years, peak at about 18 years old (around 102,700 miles), then fall to 55,300 by 39.
Cars don't lose miles: these are different cars at each age, and high-mileage cars tend to be scrapped first, so the older cars still going for MOTs are mostly low-mileage ones.
Nearly 1 in 20 cars on the road would need to pay to enter some Clean Air Zones today
The government's own count of every licensed car by the year it was first used, split by the date cut-offs every UK Clean Air Zone and ULEZ use.
First used before 2006: non-compliant regardless of fuel type (~1.6 million cars)
First used 2006–2014: compliant if petrol, charged if diesel
First used 2015 onward: compliant regardless of fuel type
Nearly one car in twenty on UK roads today (4.8%) would be charged in every zone that charges cars, such as London's ULEZ, purely because of its age, whatever it runs on.
Scotland's Low Emission Zones work differently: a car that doesn't meet the standard gets a fine rather than a charge to enter.
Official new-car CO2 figures jumped in 2019: the cars didn't change, the test did
Every new car gets an official CO2 figure from a lab test before it goes on sale. This is the typical figure for new petrol and diesel cars each year.
What does g/km mean? The grams of CO2 a car gives out for every kilometre it drives. Lower is cleaner.
Why the jump? In September 2018 the official lab test changed to a longer, faster drive that's much closer to real roads. The same cars that scored 137 g/km on the old test scored 165 g/km on the new one.
What it means for you: official figures for older and newer cars aren't a like-for-like comparison. A newer car can look dirtier on paper when it isn't, but overall cars are getting cleaner as time goes on.
More than 1 in 10 UK cars are declared as SORN
SORN means the owner has officially told the government a car isn't being used or kept on public roads.
of UK cars are SORN: just over 4 million of the 38.7 million on record
5,560 of 6,177 are SORN
Models with 5,000+ cars
12.4% of all Golfs on record
427 of 6,086 are SORN
All 10-yr old cars: 2.4%
Models with 5,000+ cars
Most of the highest shares are models from the 1980s and 1990s that are no longer sold new.
The few still around are more likely to be stored or used now and then than driven every day.
Car traffic in Britain collapsed in lockdown and still hasn't quite recovered
Official government traffic figures for Great Britain: car traffic each year compared with 2019.
2020: the lowest car traffic in over 30 years
2021: still well down, even as restrictions eased through the year
2022: closing steadily, but still short of 2019
Deliveries kept going when commuting stopped. That's why vans only fell 9.2% in 2020 and lorries 5.8%, and why both were back above 2019 by 2021.
Cars were a different story: still 7.2% down in 2022, and 0.2% down in 2025.
Our vehicle lookup uses these same figures, so a car's typical mileage line allows for these quieter years instead of assuming normal driving all the way through.
This is a fraction of what's in here
Every model, every age and every problem type, updated daily as new MOT results come in. If you're building something that needs UK vehicle-condition data at this scale, we'd like to hear about it.
Source: official government MOT history data. Findings counted to 12 September 2026; the MOT total at the top updates daily.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.