7 Million Vehicle Mileage Check

Please note: We have since released a larger mileage test in October 2020, where we tested the mileage of 10 million vehicles.

Vehicle mileage issues and clocking can be a big problem for used car buyers, not only could you end up paying more for a vehicle than it’s worth but you could also end up buying a vehicle that has more wear and tear than you expected.

To get a bigger picture of the problem we tested 7 million vehicles using MOT mileage records to compile this blog post.

What counts as a mileage discrepancy?

In this test, we used 2 different rules to trigger a mileage fail, here’s examples of these rules:

  1. The mileage has been lowered between MOT tests, e.g. 50,000 in 2019 and then 40,000 in 2020.
  2. There’s a mixture of odometer unit readings, e.g. miles and kilometres.

We offer the same mileage check for free in our initial report, which you can perform via the homepage or by entering a registration below:

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Overall test findings

We started the 7 million mileage check on the 27th June 2020 and finished on the 14th August 2020. We then starting compiling the data and released this blog post on the 6th September 2020.

Total vehicles checked: 7,000,000 (7 Million)
Total vehicles failed: 443,061
Total fail percentage: 6.32%

The findings broken down

Failed on lowered mileage: 414,159 out of 7,000,000
Percentage of above: 5.91%

Failed from mixture of odometer readings (miles and kilometres): 50,249 of 7,000,000
Percentage of above: 0.71%

Failed on both mixed readings and lowered mileage: 21,347 out of 7,000,000
Percentage of above: 0.30%

Fails by make & model

We compiled the data from this mileage check to make a list of fails by make and model, we only included vehicles with more than 2000 fails in total.

Make & ModelTotal FailedTotal CheckedFail Rate
CITROEN DISPATCH2448818829.89%
RENAULT SCENIC58401971729.61%
PEUGEOT EXPERT2397837128.63%
RENAULT GRAND SCENIC31341120927.95%
FORD TRANSIT1611614520911.09%
VAUXHALL COMBO24032175611.04%
BMW X521672051010.56%
PEUGEOT 20638393742210.25%
VAUXHALL VECTRA47044597310.23%
CITROEN XSARA22542228410.11%
FIAT PUNTO4032408819.86%
FORD TRANSIT CONNECT3162329649.59%
PEUGEOT 3072042217959.36%
MERCEDES-BENZ SPRINTER2235260208.58%
TOYOTA AVENSIS2152254318.46%
RENAULT CLIO7262875538.29%
RENAULT MEGANE3918475088.24%
VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT7196897978.01%
CITROEN C42872362057.93%
PEUGEOT 2073822484637.88%
TOYOTA YARIS5108650027.85%
FORD KA4794613487.81%
NISSAN MICRA3431445237.7%
CITROEN C32482348267.12%
AUDI A63124449366.95%
VAUXHALL ZAFIRA5912852936.93%
MINI MINI70711037106.81%
BMW 3 SERIES112331681326.68%
VAUXHALL MERIVA2049310866.59%
HONDA CIVIC4527690056.56%
FORD MONDEO5537887176.24%
AUDI A465581067466.14%
VAUXHALL VIVARO2164356636.06%
VAUXHALL ASTRA125612136325.87%
FORD FOCUS136832448365.58%
SKODA OCTAVIA2511449665.58%
VOLKSWAGEN GOLF140312532175.54%
VAUXHALL CORSA119612222565.38%
VOLKSWAGEN TRANSPORTER2117399745.29%
VOLKSWAGEN POLO74031491064.96%
SKODA FABIA2250464734.84%
MERCEDES-BENZ A2052428424.78%
MERCEDES-BENZ C2890618124.67%
AUDI A360091294954.64%
VAUXHALL INSIGNIA2679605674.42%
SEAT LEON2172544063.99%
SEAT IBIZA2612657493.97%
FORD FIESTA113602928553.87%

Explanation of 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 7,000,000 list.
  • Fail Rate – The fail percentage for the make + model (worked out using Total Failed and Total Checked data)

Worst years for lowered mileage

The below data shows the worst years for mileage lowering being detected. for example, if mileage lowering was detected on 2nd September 2015 this would count as 2015.

Year Mileage LoweredNo of Vehicles
201541756
201638250
201438097
201736292
201335647
201235116
201834974
201934733
201130851
201024931
200919581
200814993
200710920
20063729
2005431

Based on the above data, 2015 was the worst year for lowered mileage being detected in our test, followed by 2016 and then 2014.

Please note: We removed 2020 from this data due to the year not being complete at the time of test.

Average annual mileage of passed VS failed vehicle

We compared the average yearly mileage of passed vs failed vehicles, this is what we found..

Average Yearly Mileage of all Passed Vehicles:

9520

Average Yearly Mileage of All Fails (Mixed units and lowered mileage):

8936

Average Yearly Mileage of Just Lowered Mileage Fails:

8664

Estimated vehicles with mileage discrepancies in the UK

According to the .gov.uk vehicle license statistics (published on the 3rd quarter of 2019) there were 38.9 million licensed vehicles in Great Britain as of the end of September 2019. The overall test fail rate in this test was 6.32%.

6.32% of 38,900,000 =

2,458,480

More details about this data

Where was the mileage data sourced from?

We used the DVSA MOT API to gather the 7 million mileage records used in this test, we collected the records between the 27th June 2020 to the 14th August 2020.

Just how many vehicles did you check?

According to the .gov.uk vehicle license statistics there were 38.9 million licensed vehicles in Great Britain as of the end of September 2019. We checked 7 million vehicles in this test, so we checked an estimated 17.99% of all vehicles to get a clearer picture of how many have mileage issues.

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