Britain's most and least reliable car brands: MOT pass rate by manufacturer

We ranked all 51 UK manufacturers by first-time MOT pass rate, from Ferrari at 95.9% to Chevrolet at 62.8%. The full table, and what it actually tells you.

MOT DATA · 7 min read

We ranked every manufacturer with enough tests to trust

The DVSA publishes the anonymised result of every MOT test carried out in Britain. We processed the latest full year, 34,083,861 car tests, and grouped them by manufacturer instead of model. 51 makes had at least 11,000 tests logged, enough to trust the figure, and the first-time pass rate across all of them combined is 77 percent. This is brand level, not model level: it is a weighted average across everything each manufacturer sells here, from a three-door supermini to a seven-seat SUV, so treat it as background rather than a verdict on one specific car. Our separate model-by-model breakdown narrows the same dataset down to an individual car if that is what you actually need.

The top of the table is mostly younger, low-mileage fleets

Ferrari leads at 95.9 percent from 13,985 tests, followed by LEVC at 95.4 percent, Aston Martin at 93.2 percent, Bentley at 92.5 percent and Porsche at 88.7 percent. Read this carefully rather than as a verdict on build quality: these are overwhelmingly younger cars covering fewer miles a year than the national fleet, and age and mileage are the two biggest drivers of an MOT failure regardless of how well a car is engineered. LEVC in particular is almost entirely the TX, London's black-cab taxi, a working vehicle kept to a maintenance schedule most privately owned cars never get.

Restrict it to genuinely mainstream brands and the order changes

Limit the table to the 23 manufacturers with at least 300,000 tests, the volume brands most buyers are actually choosing between, and BMW comes out on top at 82.5 percent, just ahead of Jaguar (81.9 percent), Audi and Mini (both 81.6 percent) and Toyota (81.3 percent). Land Rover manages 80.6 percent, tied with Skoda and above the national average. Mercedes-Benz (79.9 percent), Suzuki (79.5 percent), Kia (78.9 percent), Hyundai (78.8 percent), Seat (78.7 percent), Honda (78.3 percent) and Volvo (78.2 percent) round out the brands beating the 77 percent national figure.

Renault sits lowest among the volume brands, and it is not a fluke

Renault has the worst first-time pass rate of any manufacturer with real volume, 68.1 percent across 1,057,716 tests, with Citroen (70.8 percent), Vauxhall (72.4 percent), Fiat (73.0 percent) and Peugeot (73.2 percent) close behind. This matches what the same dataset shows at model level: the Renault Clio, one of Britain's best-selling cars ever, passes just 61.6 percent first time, and a run of older Peugeot, Citroen and Vauxhall models already sit among the least reliable individual cars in the country. The pattern holds at brand level too, so it is not one or two unlucky models dragging the average down.

Ford, Volkswagen and Nissan sit in the middle, not the extremes

Britain's two best-selling manufacturers do not lead the table. Ford, the country's biggest seller by volume, manages 74.8 percent across 4,772,674 tests, below the 77 percent national average. Volkswagen does better at 77.1 percent, almost exactly on the average, and Nissan sits at 73.4 percent. None of these are outliers in a bad way, they are simply what a genuinely representative slice of the UK car park looks like once the low-mileage luxury brands are set aside.

The full ranking, all 51 manufacturers

From best to worst first-time pass rate: Ferrari 95.9%, LEVC 95.4%, Aston Martin 93.2%, Bentley 92.5%, Porsche 88.7%, Lexus 87.7%, Tesla 84.8%, Maserati 84.3%, MG 83.9%, BMW 82.5%, Jaguar 81.9%, Abarth 81.8%, Audi 81.6%, Mini 81.6%, Toyota 81.3%, Land Rover 80.6%, Skoda 80.6%, Mercedes-Benz 79.9%, Suzuki 79.5%, Kia 78.9%, Hyundai 78.8%, Seat 78.7%, Subaru 78.6%, Honda 78.3%, Dacia 78.3%, Volvo 78.2%, Jeep 78.0%, Smart (MCC) 77.7%, Smart 77.2%, Volkswagen 77.1%, Mazda 77.0%, Mitsubishi 76.9%, DS 76.2%, London Taxis International 75.5%, Ford 74.8%, Isuzu 73.7%, Nissan 73.4%, Peugeot 73.2%, Fiat 73.0%, SsangYong 73.0%, Vauxhall 72.4%, Alfa Romeo 72.4%, Citroen 70.8%, Iveco 70.2%, Rover 70.2%, Saab 69.1%, Renault 68.1%, Chrysler 67.2%, Daihatsu 67.1%, Chrysler-Jeep 67.0%, Chevrolet 62.8%.

What this is useful for, and what it is not

A brand-level pass rate is a reasonable steer if you are choosing between manufacturers with no other information, but it is a blunt instrument next to checking the actual car in front of you. Two entries above are worth a specific caveat rather than being taken at face value: Smart and Smart (MCC) are recorded as separate makes in the DVSA data, most likely reflecting how older and newer examples of the same brand were registered, and Chrysler-Jeep appears as its own distinct entry alongside Chrysler and Jeep separately, a quirk of how the underlying vehicle record was kept rather than three different manufacturers. Whatever you are looking at, run the specific registration through our free Vehicle History checker for its own MOT and mileage record before you let a brand average make the decision for you.

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