Which car models beat their age on the MOT test? 27.9 million tests, ranked

244 models' MOT pass rate vs the national average for cars the same age. Porsche and Mercedes-Benz pull furthest ahead; panel vans fall furthest behind.

MOT DATA · 6 min read

A different cut from the age-bands piece

Our age-bands guide grouped different models by how old their tested fleet is on average and found pass rate does not fall in a straight line. This is a different question: for a single model, how does its pass rate compare with the national average once you hold the car's age constant, and does that gap grow or shrink as the model itself gets older. We took every model with at least 5 model-years of usable data and at least 20,000 first-time tests overall (244 models), and for each model-year, subtracted the national first-time pass rate for cars of that same first-use year. A positive number means the model beat cars of its own age nationally; a negative number means it fell behind them. 3,623 model-year data points, 27,936,640 first-time tests, sit behind the 244 models ranked here.

The models that age best

Averaged across their full model-year range: Porsche 911 +17.1 points (32 model-years, 1986 to 2020, 44,783 tests), Porsche Boxster +14.7 (24 years, 31,850 tests), Mercedes-Benz SL +14.6 (24 years, 18,830 tests), Porsche Cayenne +11.2 (19 years, 29,037 tests), Mercedes-Benz S-Class +11.0 (19 years, 24,049 tests), BMW 530 +10.1 (16 years, 21,393 tests), Lexus CT +10.0 (10 years, 30,316 tests), Lexus NX +9.2 (8 years, 28,777 tests), BMW Z4 +9.1 (17 years, 35,106 tests), Audi Q7 +9.1 (14 years, 41,321 tests). Every one of the top ten is a premium or performance model, and Porsche takes three of the top four places on its own.

The models that age worst, and a real caveat

Vauxhall Vivaro -13.6 points (18 years, 190,946 tests), Renault Trafic -12.3 (18 years, 107,661 tests), Citroen DS3 -11.8 (6 years, 71,823 tests), Nissan NV200 -10.8 (10 years, 25,040 tests), Renault Grand Scenic -10.7 (15 years, 20,957 tests), Renault Kangoo -10.6 (21 years, 54,300 tests), Vauxhall Movano -10.4 (22 years, 52,098 tests), Renault Clio -10.2 (21 years, 300,547 tests), Vauxhall Combo -9.8 (20 years, 90,789 tests), Citroen Dispatch -9.3 (19 years, 43,091 tests). Six of the bottom ten are panel vans (Vivaro, Trafic, NV200, Movano, Combo, Dispatch), and that is a real confound worth naming rather than glossing over: a van's duty cycle, fleet use, multiple drivers and higher average mileage all push a pass rate down independently of age, the same way our diesel-versus-petrol piece found mileage does. Renault Clio and Citroen DS3 sitting in the same bottom ten as the vans, on ordinary private-car mileage, is the harder finding to explain away.

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What this means for a salvage buyer

This is a comparison against the national fleet at the same age, not a verdict on engineering quality, and it does not replace checking the actual car. But it is a genuinely different signal from a model's raw pass rate: a model near the top of this list is still beating same-age cars nationally even as it gets older, which is exactly the kind of thing that supports paying a bit more for a higher-mileage example of it. A model near the bottom needs the individual car's own history to carry more of the weight of your decision, because the model itself is not doing it any favours.

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.

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