Which car brands beat their age on the MOT test? 33 million tests, ranked

34 manufacturers ranked by MOT pass rate against the national average for cars of the same age. Porsche and Lexus lead; Renault and Chevrolet trail furthest.

MOT DATA · 6 min read

The same method as our model-level piece, pooled by brand instead

Our brand reliability guide ranked all 51 manufacturers by raw first-time MOT pass rate: useful, but it does not separate a brand's actual build quality from the age of the fleet DVSA happens to be testing this year. This applies the same age-normalising method our model-level piece used, pooled up to brand level: for every manufacturer, we combined every model it sells by first-use year, and for each of those brand-years, subtracted the national first-time pass rate for cars of that same age. A positive number means the brand beat same-age cars nationally that year; a negative number means it fell behind them. We only ranked a brand if it had at least 5 qualifying model-years and 50,000 first-time tests overall, each individual brand-year needed at least 1,000 tests, and each national comparison year needed at least 1,000 tests too. 34 of the 85 manufacturers with usable year data cleared that bar: 782 brand-year data points, 32,972,031 first-time tests.

The brands that age best

Averaged across their full range of qualifying years: Porsche +12.7 points (25 years, 1997 to 2021, 161,174 tests), Lexus +10.5 (21 years, 157,400 tests), Subaru +6.0 (21 years, 51,962 tests), Honda +5.3 (25 years, 910,120 tests), Toyota +5.1 (29 years, 1,674,131 tests), BMW +4.8 (30 years, 1,832,741 tests), Mini +4.6 (22 years, 801,993 tests), Audi +3.8 (24 years, 1,696,397 tests), Jaguar +3.8 (26 years, 340,479 tests), Land Rover +3.7 (37 years, 926,761 tests). Every one of the top six is a Japanese or German brand with a premium or performance reputation, which lines up with the model-level result rather than contradicting it.

The brands that age worst, and two real caveats

Renault -8.2 points (22 years, 1,039,124 tests), Chevrolet -6.8 (10 years, 54,569 tests), Citroen -5.5 (22 years, 1,054,549 tests), Dacia -4.8 (9 years, 192,927 tests), Tesla -3.9 (9 years, 85,137 tests), Vauxhall -3.6 (26 years, 3,026,531 tests), Peugeot -3.5 (28 years, 1,468,969 tests), Nissan -3.4 (25 years, 1,652,255 tests), Fiat -2.8 (25 years, 779,136 tests), Alfa Romeo -2.1 (15 years, 62,783 tests). Two of these need a caveat rather than a straight reading. Chevrolet withdrew from the UK car market in 2015, so every year in its data is an ageing, increasingly orphaned fleet with thinner dealer support, not a brand actively selling and servicing new cars alongside the old ones the way Ford or Toyota is. Tesla only has 9 qualifying years and 85,137 tests behind its number, the smallest base of any brand on this list, and EVs sit on a different MOT clock (first test at 4 years, not 3) and fail on a different mix of items to a combustion car, so treat its position as a much shakier read than Renault's or Vauxhall's, both built on over a million tests.

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What this means for a salvage buyer

Same limits as the model-level piece: this compares a brand's fleet against the national average at the same age, it is not a verdict on any individual car, and it does not replace checking the actual vehicle. But it is a different question to 'which brand has the highest pass rate right now', and the two rankings can disagree for a brand whose fleet skews unusually old or young. A brand near the top of this list is holding up against same-age cars nationally even as its fleet gets older, which is exactly the kind of signal that supports paying a bit more for a higher-mileage example. A brand near the bottom needs the individual car's own MOT history to do more of the work in your decision.

Check the actual car before you rely on any of this

None of this replaces the reg in front of you. Run our free vehicle history checker before you bid: full DVSA MOT history, the mileage timeline and any clocking anomalies, on any UK registration, no account needed.

Check any UK reg free: MOT, mileage and write-off markers

Real MOT data for this model

• Porsche 911 - 89% pass rate, avg 60,658 miles
• Lexus Nx - 93.1% pass rate, avg 45,209 miles
• Honda Jazz - 78.7% pass rate, avg 63,473 miles
• Renault Clio - 61.6% pass rate, avg 72,225 miles
• Chevrolet Spark - 64.7% pass rate, avg 67,745 miles

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• The most common MOT advisories, and what they become if you ignore them - An advisory does not fail the car, but the same defects often turn up as fails next time. The full DVSA ranking, and how often each one gets acted on first.