Open MOT pass rate data

Every figure shown one model at a time across our 2,005 MOT pass rate pages, in one file: first-time MOT pass rate, tests analysed, average mileage and average year of manufacture, for every model with at least 500 DVSA tests behind it. National first-time pass rate across all of them: 76.7%. See which cars pass and fail most for the full write-up.

Download: by model

What's in each row

  • make, model - as recorded by the DVSA
  • tests - individual MOT tests behind the figure, so you can weigh a 71% from 800,000 tests differently from a 71% from 600
  • first_time_pass_rate_percent - the share that passed on the first attempt, before any rectification
  • avg_mileage, avg_year - the average odometer reading and year of manufacture across every car of that model tested

2,005 models across 80 makes, covering 32,600,056 individual tests in total. Average year of manufacture across the dataset ranges from 1975 for the oldest-skewing models to 2023 for the newest.

Download: by make

The same figures rolled up to brand level, 50 makes with enough volume to be reliable, test-volume-weighted rather than a simple average of each make's models. This is a different cut, not the model file re-grouped: a make with a few very high-volume models weighs differently here than one with many low-volume models.

Download: by failure reason

What each model specifically fails its MOT on, not just the pass rate: 19,119 rows across 1,966 models, from a separate DVSA file (the reason-for-rejection extract) joined against 34,264,987 2024 test results. Each defect is ranked by how far a model's own rate for it sits above the real national rate for that same defect, which is what surfaces genuinely distinctive failures rather than the tyres and lights every car shares. Nobody else publishes this.

Download: by exact defect, national

The same join, ranked nationally instead of per model: every one of the 527 distinct defect descriptions the DVSA records, not grouped into its own roughly ten broad published categories. See the write-up for what tops it.

Where the numbers come from

The DVSA publishes anonymised MOT test results for every car tested in Great Britain under the Open Government Licence. We aggregate the latest full year (33 million car tests) down to one row per model: the share that passed on the first attempt, before any rectification, which is the figure that actually reflects how the car left the factory and the road rather than how good the mechanic was on the day.

Licence

Free to reuse for any purpose. The source DVSA data only requires attribution to DVSA; we ask the same plus a link back to this page if you publish anything built on this export, though it is not a condition of use.

How to cite this

Salvage Prophet (2026). UK MOT first-time pass rate by car model [Data set]. https://www.salvageprophet.co.uk/open-data. Derived from DVSA anonymised MOT testing data (Open Government Licence).

For the by-make file, replace "by car model" with "by car make" in the citation above. For the failure-reasons file, replace it with "most common MOT failure reasons by car model".

A second dataset: recorded UK salvage closing bids

Everything above is DVSA MOT data. Separately, we track recorded closing bids from UK salvage auctions, which are not independently confirmed sales: median recorded closing bid by model, by make, by write-off category (Cat N, Cat S, Cat B and more), by fuel type (electric against petrol and diesel), by transmission, by colour, by damage type (fire, water, theft recovered and more), by whether the lot was listed with its keys, by whether VAT is chargeable on top of the hammer price, by whether the lot came with its V5 logbook, by whether it carries a documented full service history, by whether it starts and drives, by which consignor sold it, by body shape, by door count and by the week the auction closed, none of it published anywhere else. The full breakdown is free to read at the recorded closing-bid dataset overview, and all sixteen cuts are downloadable below: every model with at least 3 ended listings, every make with at least 20, and the national write-off-category, fuel-type, transmission, colour, damage-type, key-availability, VAT-status, logbook, service-history, runner-status, seller, body-shape, doors and week-by-week splits at that same 20-lot floor. Every qualifying make also gets its own roll-up page (see "By make" on the sold-price index). Both the by-model and by-make files go a step further: each row also carries that model or make's own real DVSA MOT first-time pass rate, test count and average mileage, the two datasets already joined in one download instead of something you have to match up yourself. Free to reuse with attribution.

Browse it instead

Prefer to explore interactively? Use the MOT Reliability Explorer to filter and sort every model, or compare two models head to head.