How many 3-year-old cars fail their first MOT?
8.1% of cars fail when they take their first MOT at around 3 years old — and it varies sharply by model.
8.1%
Fail their first MOT, nationally
29.3%
Fiat Doblo, highest
0.0%
Aston Martin Db11, lowest
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“8.1% of cars fail their first MOT at around age 3 — the Fiat Doblo fails 29.3% of the time, the highest of any model with enough data.”
Nationally, 8.1% of tests in this age window end in failure, based on 903,761 tests.
Highest first-MOT failure rates, by model
Every model with enough first-MOT data
Methodology and data source
- Source: DVSA “Anonymised MOT tests and results”, data.gov.uk, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
- Coverage: Full year 2024, test class 4 (cars), normal (initial) tests only.
- A single year of data can't confirm a given test is a car's literal first-ever MOT (it could be a late first test, or an earlier one outside this dataset's year) — this uses tests on cars aged 3.0–3.5 years as the closest honest proxy, since no MOT is required before 3 years old.
- This is a single, narrow age cohort by construction, so it doesn't need the age-adjustment other comparisons on this site require — every model's figure covers the same few months of vehicle age.
- Models below the minimum sample size for this specific age window are omitted, even if the model has enough tests overall to have its own MOT statistics page.
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Frequently asked questions
- How many cars fail their first MOT?
- 8.1% of tests on cars aged 3.0–3.5 years — the narrow window right after a car's first MOT becomes due — end in failure, based on 903,761 tests in the DVSA dataset.
- Which car has the highest first-MOT failure rate?
- Among models with enough data, the Fiat Doblo has the highest first-MOT failure rate in this dataset, at 29.3%, based on 283 tests.