MOT advisories explained: what they mean when buying a car
An advisory is not a fail, but it is a warning of the next bill. How to read MOT advisory items when buying used or salvage, and which ones actually matter.
BUYING · 5 min read
Not a fail, but a warning
An advisory is something the MOT tester noticed that is not bad enough to fail the car yet, but is worth watching. It passed, but the tester is telling you a bill is coming. On a used or salvage car, the advisory history is a cheap way to see what is wearing out.
Most defects DVSA testers flag are not fails
DVSA testers do not record every defect the same way. Each one carries its own severity: a genuine Fail, a Minor note that does not fail the car, one rectified on the spot during the test, or an Advisory. We joined the DVSA's 2024 defect-level extract against 54,086,786 first-time car MOT tests to build the failure-reason data used elsewhere on this site, and only 24,791,197 of the 88,311,928 resolved defect citations across the year, 28.1 percent, were an actual Fail. The other 71.9 percent, well over 60 million citations, were advisories, minor notes or fixed there and then - a defect DVSA saw and recorded, on a car that still passed.
The common ones
Typical advisories are tyres getting low but still legal, brake pads or discs wearing, light corrosion that is not yet structural, a slightly perished bush, or an oil leak that is not yet serious. Individually most are minor; together they paint a picture of how the car has been kept.
Which ones matter
Corrosion advisories are the ones to respect, because rust only gets worse and a light advisory this year can be a structural fail in a couple more. Repeated advisories for the same item across several years, ignored each time, tell you the previous owner deferred everything, which usually means more is due.
Using advisory history on salvage
You can pull the full MOT and advisory history for any car free on the Vehicle History checker here. On a salvage buy it shows what was wearing before the incident, which helps you separate accident damage from ordinary age. Read the advisories, price the near-term items, and factor them into your offer.