At what age do cars start failing their MOT?
Every car ages the same way and the data shows exactly where it turns. A 3-year-old car passes first time 90% of the time. By 30 years old that is down to 72.3%.
Pass rate by age
| Age | First-time pass rate |
|---|---|
| 3 years | 90% |
| 4 years | 89.4% |
| 5 years | 87.9% |
| 6 years | 85.9% |
| 7 years | 83.5% |
| 8 years | 80.9% |
| 9 years | 78.3% |
| 10 years | 75.4% |
| 11 years | 72.9% |
| 12 years | 70.8% |
| 13 years | 68.7% |
| 14 years | 67% |
| 15 years | 66.1% |
| 16 years | 64.7% |
| 17 years | 64.8% |
| 18 years | 64.1% |
| 19 years | 64.2% |
| 20 years | 64% |
| 21 years | 64.7% |
| 22 years | 65.4% |
| 23 years | 66.2% |
| 24 years | 67.3% |
| 25 years | 68.6% |
| 26 years | 70% |
| 27 years | 70.4% |
| 28 years | 70.7% |
| 29 years | 71.3% |
| 30 years | 72.3% |
What this means when you are buying
Age matters more than model. A well-regarded model at 30 years old will still fail more often than a poorly-regarded one at 3. When you compare two cars, compare them at the same age, which is what the per-year figures on every model page are for.
Where the curve steepens
The fall is not even across the range. It is steepest in the run-up to 10 years old: the single biggest year-on-year drop in the whole table is between 9 and 10, where the first-time pass rate falls 2.9 percentage points in that one year. Below that age band the year-on-year fall is smaller; a car that clears its early years cleanly still has this stretch ahead of it.
Checking a specific car? Its own MOT record beats any average. See every test, the mileage timeline and any clocking flags with the free mileage check.