2.5 Million Vehicle Mileage Check

Please note: we have since released a bigger test in September 2020 when we tested the mileage of 7 million vehicles

Vehicle mileage issues and clocking can be a problem for used car buyers., We have done this test to get an idea of how many vehicles have mileage discrepancies (the more data the better the picture).

What counts as a mileage discrepancy?

When the mileage has been lowered between MOT tests.

When there’s a mixture of miles and kilometre unit readings.

We offer the same mileage check as we carried out on this test for free, and you can check your vehicle in seconds below:

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Overall findings

We started this test 29^th November 2019 and finished it on 10^th December 2019. We started compiling the data on the 10^th December 2019 (there was a lot of data to work through!).

Total vehicles checked: 2,500,000 (2.5 Million)

Total vehicles failed: 160,430

Total fail percentage: 6.41%

The findings broken down

Failed on lowered mileage: 149,767 out of 2,500,000

Percentage of above: 5.99%

Failed from mixture of odometer readings (miles and kilometres): 18,224 of 2,500,000

Percentage of above: 0.72%

Failed on both mixed readings and lowered mileage: 7561 out of 2,500,000

Percentage of above: 0.30%

Fails By Make & Model

We used the mileage data in this test to see which makes and models had the most fails. We only included vehicles that had more than 800 fails in total.

Make & Model	Total Failed	Total Checked	Fail Rate
VAUXHALL COMBO	856	6507	13.16%
FORD TRANSIT	5598	43098	12.99%
BMW X5	882	7531	11.71%
VAUXHALL VECTRA	1811	15639	11.58%
PEUGEOT 206	1391	12227	11.38%
FORD TRANSIT CONNECT	1087	9828	11.06%
FIAT PUNTO	1331	12755	10.44%
MERCEDES-BENZ SPRINTER	859	8282	10.37%
RENAULT CLIO	2545	27257	9.34%
RENAULT MEGANE	1368	15293	8.95%
NISSAN MICRA	1189	13730	8.66%
VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT	2577	29887	8.62%
FORD KA	1652	19407	8.51%
TOYOTA YARIS	1662	19810	8.39%
PEUGEOT 207	1230	15219	8.08%
CITROEN C4	952	12081	7.88%
VAUXHALL ZAFIRA	2078	27640	7.52%
CITROEN C3	861	11567	7.44%
AUDI A6	1236	16697	7.40%
MINI MINI	2623	36794	7.13%
BMW 3 SERIES	4370	62757	6.96%
HONDA CIVIC	1553	22516	6.90%
FORD MONDEO	2016	29281	6.89%
AUDI A4	2568	38844	6.61%
VAUXHALL ASTRA	4545	70005	6.49%
SKODA OCTAVIA	893	14655	6.09%
VOLKSWAGEN GOLF	5228	86179	6.07%
FORD FOCUS	4771	80803	5.90%
VAUXHALL CORSA	4284	73652	5.82%
VOLKSWAGEN POLO	2588	49352	5.24%
AUDI A3	2402	48023	5.00%
MERCEDES-BENZ C	999	21664	4.61%
VAUXHALL INSIGNIA	918	20707	4.43%
SEAT LEON	849	19665	4.32%
SEAT IBIZA	975	23340	4.18%
FORD FIESTA	3902	96986	4.02%

Explanation of the above data:

Make & Model – Vehicle make and model.
Total Failed – How many failed out of the Total Checked for this make + model.
Total Checked – The total checked from the 2,500,000 list.
Fail Rate – The fail percentage for the make + model (worked out using Total Failed and Total Checked data)

Average Annual Mileage of Passed VS Failed Vehicle

Just like we did in the 1 million mileage test, we compiled the average yearly mileage of vehicles that passed VS vehicles that failed. This is what we found.

Average Yearly Mileage of Passed Vehicle (2,339,570 Passed):

9684

Average Yearly Mileage of Failed Vehicle (160,430 Failed):

8932

Estimated Vehicles With Mileage Discrepancies in the UK

Below we have worked out the estimated number of vehicles in the UK with mileage issues. According to racfoundation.org there were 38.7 million vehicles as of June 2019.

The overall failure percentage in this test was: 6.41%

6.41% of 38,700,000 =

2,480,670

More information about this data

How was this test carried out?

We used a large list of vehicle registrations and ran them through our custom software, this took some time do, but gave us the data we needed for this research.

Where is the mileage data from?

We used the gov.uk MOT API to collect the mileage data.

Why so many vehicles?

The more data the better, it gives a clearer picture of mileage discrepancies if we collect more data. So, we tried our best to collect as much as possible.