Want the Best Chance of Passing Your MOT First Time? Perhaps It’s Time to Buy a Ferrari

According to our latest research, Ferrari owners are the most likely to get their vehicle through an MOT first time.

The Italian supercar manufacturer was found to have an impressive MOT pass rate of 95.4% for cars aged three years old.

Other top spots are filled by competitor prestige brands, including podium finishes for Bentley and Aston Martin, and a respectable sixth place for Porsche.

The findings come after we analysed data from our Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the DVSA (Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency).

Of the more mainstream brands, it was purely Japanese marques that filled the rest of Top 10, with Subaru and Lexus taking 4^th and 5^th places, and 7^th to 10^th taken by Honda, Infinity, Mazda, and Suzuki respectively.

At the other end of the spectrum, SsangYong fares less successfully, coming in last with a failure rate of 21.9%, significantly worse than the 13.1% overall average for three-year-old cars.

The MOT failure rate of each brand is often indicative of how well owners maintain their cars and the likely annual mileages they will cover. For instance, 6.8% of cars fail MOT tests due to defective tyres¹, a component which is the driver’s responsibility to monitor for wear and tear.

 

 

Recently, we reported that an estimated 280,000 three-year-old cars will fail their first legally required MOT test throughout 2021, despite still being relatively young.

When looking at failure rates for all cars aged between 3 and 15 years old, the picture remains largely similar, but with Tesla, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz and DS nudging their way into the top spots to create a Top 10 filled exclusively with prestige brands.

 

 

Chevrolet takes last place, with 45.6% of its cars failing first time, though it hasn’t sold any of its mainstream models in the UK since 2014 and therefore represents a sample of older vehicles.

Jessica Potts, Head of Marketing at BookMyGarage.com, commented “It’s perhaps no surprise to see so many luxury brands perform best in the MOT test.

“Owners of prestige car brands often cover fewer miles annually as the car is unlikely to be the owner’s sole vehicle and they are usually maintained to very high standards. MOT pass rates are less indicative of brand reliability and more a representation of how well owners maintain their car and how much of a ‘workhorse’ a particular brands’ models tend to become.

“That being said, there’s a noticeable dominance of more mainstream Japanese brands in the Top 10, which perhaps goes some way to prove the notion that Japanese cars are indeed very reliable.”

 

 

1. Source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/855784/dvsa-mot-03-mot-class-3-and-4-vehicles-initial-failures-by-defect-category.csv/preview