We wanted to do a test to find out which vehicles have stood the test of time + wear and tear. We thought a good way to do this was to create a test based on high mileage vehicles that match the following rules:
- Are 10 years or older.
- Have done 100,000 miles or more.
- Do not have mileage discrepancies or odd looking mileage.
We think the active MOT rate gives a good indicator of reliability, this basically means vehicles that still have an in-date MOT (at the time of test start – 15th December 2019). We think this works well as an indicator because, vehicles in the UK are legally required to have a valid MOT if they are to be used on public roads.
We tested a total of 617,231 vehicles that had passed the mileage discrepancies test, we then removed a further 2646 vehicles that looked like they may have had mileage errors (e.g. typo), this gave us a total of 614,585 vehicles for this test, that have done 100,000 miles or more and are older than 10 years.
We also filtered out any vehicles that had less than 5000 total checked as we think less than 5000 checks is not enough data.
Makes & Models List
| MAKE AND MODEL | TOTAL CHECKED | MOT (ACTIVE) | MOT RATE (ACTIVE) | AVG MILEAGE (ACTIVE) | DIESEL FUELTYPE (ACTIVE) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VOLKSWAGEN TRANSPORTER | 5587 | 5045 | 90.29% | 153,089 | 99.48% |
| VAUXHALL INSIGNIA | 5395 | 4272 | 79.18% | 127,406 | 92.34% |
| AUDI A3 | 16270 | 12763 | 78.44% | 135,069 | 80.41% |
| MINI MINI | 7907 | 6166 | 77.98% | 120,663 | 18.73% |
| VAUXHALL VIVARO | 5069 | 3913 | 77.19% | 143,534 | 100% |
| FORD FIESTA | 12715 | 9252 | 72.76% | 122,989 | 41.73% |
| HONDA CIVIC | 8313 | 5978 | 71.91% | 129,286 | 34.44% |
| VOLKSWAGEN GOLF | 31367 | 22392 | 71.38% | 136,232 | 71.42% |
| SEAT LEON | 5668 | 3978 | 70.18% | 130,622 | 75.79% |
| VOLKSWAGEN POLO | 7555 | 5266 | 69.70% | 124,035 | 32.83% |
| AUDI A4 | 18431 | 12768 | 69.27% | 141,565 | 80.92% |
| AUDI A6 | 7626 | 5263 | 69.01% | 145,933 | 93.69% |
| BMW 3 SERIES | 27282 | 18689 | 68.50% | 136,149 | 70.18% |
| FORD TRANSIT | 19944 | 13475 | 67.56% | 148,450 | 100% |
| MERCEDES-BENZ SPRINTER | 5535 | 3640 | 65.76% | 178,259 | 100% |
| VAUXHALL ASTRA | 21599 | 13639 | 63.14% | 127,467 | 47.05% |
| FORD FOCUS | 22231 | 14001 | 62.97% | 127,245 | 47.80% |
| SKODA OCTAVIA | 6104 | 3789 | 62.07% | 150,247 | 87.56% |
| VAUXHALL CORSA | 9799 | 6073 | 61.97% | 119,932 | 35.12% |
| VAUXHALL ZAFIRA | 9178 | 5671 | 61.78% | 127,120 | 43.43% |
| VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT | 17058 | 9914 | 58.11% | 148,568 | 95.87% |
| FORD MONDEO | 15488 | 8521 | 55.01% | 140,938 | 83.78% |
| RENAULT CLIO | 5413 | 2886 | 53.31% | 120,780 | 30.90% |
| VAUXHALL VECTRA | 9573 | 3944 | 41.19% | 137,018 | 57.09% |
Explanation of above data:
- Make and Model – The vehicle make and model.
- Total Checked – How many were checked in total (including valid and expired MOT’s)
- MOT (ACTIVE) – The amount of vehicles that have a valid and active MOT (at the time of test start – 15th December 2019).
- MOT Rate (ACTIVE) – The percentage with an active MOT ( at the time of test start – 15th December 2019).
- AVG Mileage (ACTIVE) – The average overall mileage that have an active/valid MOT – Worked out from last MOT mileage record of all vehicles then averaged ( at the time of test start – 15th December 2019).
- Diesel Fueltype (ACTIVE) – The percentage of vehicles that were deisel and have an active/valid MOT (at the time of test start – 15th December 2019).
More information about this data
How did we perform this test?
We used the gov.uk MOT API and a large list of vehicle registrations. We then used custom software to create a target list that matched our requirements: over 100,000 miles and 10+ years old. We removed any vehicles that had mileage discrepancies or odd looking mileage.
