Bentley Brooklands — MOT statistics 2024
The Bentley Brooklands failed 15.8% of 424 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 44.1 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 56% less often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.
Age-adjusted peer: BMW M8 (index 44.1) — the two published results are 0.0 index points apart.
Bentley Brooklands common problems: what actually fails the MOT
Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment are well below the reference at 9.1 per 100 tests, against 30.5 per 100 tests across UK vehicles of the same ages.
higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests
family vs national — matched to UK vehicles of the same ages — top component groups, per 100 tests. Legend: This family · National avg. Combined labels: family / national average. A gap here reflects how these vehicles are driven, used and maintained as well as how they were built — an MOT defect is a test outcome, not a breakdown.
Component-group comparison table
Each ratio carries a 95% interval. With 6 groups compared here, roughly one apparent difference in twenty is chance alone.
| Group | This family | Cases behind it | UK, same ages | Family / national |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brakes | 13.8 | 379 | 20.8 | 0.66×0.60–0.73 |
| Suspension | 10.5 | 288 | 23.4 | 0.45×0.40–0.50 |
| Lamps & electrical | 9.1 | 249 | 30.4 | 0.30×0.26–0.34 |
| Visibility | 5.3 | 147 | 11.2 | 0.47×0.40–0.56 |
| Tyres | 3.6 | 100 | 6.1 | 0.59×0.49–0.73 |
| Body & structure | 2.0 | 55 | 14.9 | 0.13×0.10–0.17 |
| What failed | per 100 tests (this family) | per 100 tests (UK average) | ratio family / UK | What to check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parking brake efficiency below minimum requirementParking brake efficiency below minimum requirement | 3.49 | 1.24 | 2.82× | Feel for brake judder and pulling on the test drive |
| Parking brake efficiency less than 50% of the…Parking brake efficiency less than 50% of the required value | 2.36 | 0.32 | 7.28× | Feel for brake judder and pulling on the test drive |
| Suspension joint dust cover severely deterioratedA suspension joint dust cover severely deteriorated | 2.36 | 1.90 | 1.24× | Listen for knocks over bumps — worn joints show up on the test |
| Spring or spring component fractured or seriously…A spring or spring component fractured or seriously weakened | 2.18 | 2.86 | 0.76× | Ask the seller about: A spring or spring component fractured or seriously weakened |
| Rear registration plate lamp or light source…A rear registration plate lamp or light source missing or inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources | 1.89 | 2.83 | 0.67× | Try every light and switch — lamps are a top failure |
Named defects ranked by how much more often they appear than the national average — not by raw rate.
Bentley Brooklands MOT advisories: what gets flagged
Suspension is highest at 24.4 per 100 tests; Non-component advisories are lowest at 2.2 per 100 tests — the gap is 22.2 per 100 tests.
higher bar = flagged more oftenadvisory items per 100 initial tests
Advisory rates table
| Group | Advisories per 100 |
|---|---|
| Suspension | 24.4 |
| Tyres | 21.2 |
| Brakes | 20.1 |
| Emissions & leaks | 12.7 |
| Steering | 7 |
| Non-component advisories | 2.2 |
Advisories are wear the tester noted but didn't fail — what will need money soon.
If a car like this fails, does it fail again?
A failure rate does not say whether a failure is a one-off or the start of something. This follows the same vehicles into their next ordinary MOT a year later — retests after a repair are excluded, because they follow a failure by definition. 2019-2024.
| After this year's test | Fails next year | Vehicles followed |
|---|---|---|
| It failed | 23.5% | 166 |
| It passed | 14.1% | 1,468 |
A failed test raises next year's chance of failing again by 9.4 percentage points. The failure most likely to come back is brakes — 20.5% of those vehicles fail again next year. Some of this is the vehicle and some is the owner: a car that was let go once tends to be let go again. One caveat: a car that fails may be sold or scrapped rather than tested again, so these figures describe the vehicles that came back.
Adjusted for how much these are actually driven
The headline index adjusts for the fleet's age. Wear, though, follows mileage: a three-year-old taxi and a three-year-old garage queen sit in the same age band. These two rows compare every car with vehicles of the same age, and then with vehicles of the same age and the same annual mileage, 2019-2024, on 2,419 tests. Both stand on the six-year corpus so they are measured on identical data — compare them with each other, not with the headline index above, which is measured on 2024 alone.
| Standardised for | Index | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Age only | 48.5 | fails less often than expected |
| Age and annual mileage | 55.1 | fails less often than vehicles driven as much |
| Share doing under 3,000 miles a year | 62.5% | a large low-use population — often second vehicles or cars kept for occasional use |
Split by how much each car is driven. This is a split by annual mileage, not by body type — the MOT record does not say whether a car is a conversion. Within each band the index compares with vehicles of the same age driven as much.
| Miles a year | Tests | Failed first time | Index within band |
|---|---|---|---|
| under 3,000 | 1,512 | 14.5% | 52.7 |
| 3,000–6,000 | 860 | 22.0% | 58.1 |
Mileage matters here: matching on how much these are driven moves the figure by 6.6 points — this fleet is driven less than the vehicles it is measured against, so the age-only view flatters it — but it does not change which side of normal the car sits on. One limit to keep in mind: mileage is partly a result of how often a car breaks down — one that spends weeks in the workshop covers fewer miles — so the mileage-matched figure can understate a real weakness. Tests with no usable odometer reading are left out of it.
How does the Bentley Brooklands perform as it gets older?
Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–47%.
Takeaway: solid line: this family; dashed: all cars.
Data table
| Age | Bentley Brooklands | All vehicles | Gap |
|---|
How dangerous are Bentley Brooklands MOT failures?
Major defects are well below the reference at 33.9 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.
higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests
Severity table
| Severity | This family /100 | National /100 | Family / national |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minor | 8.22 | 14.22 | 0.58× |
| Major | 33.88 | 52.75 | 0.64× |
| Dangerous | 7.09 | 11.15 | 0.64× |
Chart values: Minor 8.2 · Major 33.9 · Dangerous 7.1.
Per 100 tests on this family. National average: Minor 14.2 · Major 52.8 · Dangerous 11.2 per 100.
Does the month of a Bentley Brooklands MOT matter?
Aug is highest at 19.6%; Mar is lowest at 14.8% — the gap is 4.8 percentage points.
higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points
Chart scale: 13%–33%.
bars: Bentley Brooklands · dashed: all class-4 cars
Month-by-month table
| Month | Bentley Brooklands | All vehicles | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 18.67% | 31.12% | -12.4 pp |
| Feb | 16.58% | 29.99% | -13.4 pp |
| Mar | 14.78% | 28.26% | -13.5 pp |
| Apr | 16.44% | 29.78% | -13.3 pp |
| May | 18.4% | 28.79% | -10.4 pp |
| Jun | 17.28% | 28.15% | -10.9 pp |
| Jul | 19.07% | 29.33% | -10.3 pp |
| Aug | 19.57% | 29.2% | -9.6 pp |
| Sep | 15.75% | 28.19% | -12.4 pp |
| Oct | 17.45% | 30.34% | -12.9 pp |
| Nov | 16.6% | 30.58% | -14.0 pp |
| Dec | 16.77% | 29.33% | -12.6 pp |
Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 4.8 percentage points — noticeable seasonality. Seasonality partly reflects registration-date clustering, not weather.
Before reading the shape: most of it is not about cars. Britain changes its registration plates twice a year, and 18.9% of these cars were first registered in March with another17.1% in September — 36% in two months against the 17% an even spread would give. An MOT falls due three years after first registration, so the buying calendar becomes the testing calendar. That shapes how many cars are tested each month — not how often they fail: the busiest months here are not the worst ones, so read the failure line on its own and the volume behind it separately.
Bentley Brooklands average mileage by age
Does high mileage mean more Bentley Brooklands MOT failures?
All ages together, split by odometer (the bands are not split by age, so higher-mileage cars are also older and this mixes wear with age): 8.2% of the lowest-mileage cars failed versus 21.6% of the highest.
| Odometer | % failing | Tests | Gap vs lowest-mileage band |
|---|---|---|---|
| <40k miles | 8.2% | 704 | +0.0 pp |
| 40-70k miles | 18.8% | 887 | +10.6 pp |
| 70-100k miles | 21.6% | 731 | +13.4 pp |
line: median · band: middle half of the fleet (p25–p75)
Mileage by age (p25 / median / p75)
| Age | p25 | Median | p75 | Tests |
|---|
Where in Britain the Bentley Brooklands fails its MOT most
Too few tests in any single postcode area to name one, so this is the wider picture across 2,751 tests, 2019-2024.
| Part of Britain | % failing | Tests |
|---|---|---|
| Northern England | 19.83% | 353 |
| Midlands | 17.58% | 711 |
| Southern England | 16.5% | 1,491 |
| Scotland | 10% | 120 |
Raw pass/fail rates, not age-adjusted: fleets differ by region. England is split north of Sheffield, between Sheffield and Oxford, and south of it.
Bentley Brooklands faults that come together
Lamps & electrical + Visibility stand out at 7.53×, against 1.00× if the faults were independent.
above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less
| Group A | Group B | Together | Lift |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Visibility | 55 | 7.53× (rough estimate) |
| Brakes | Steering | 23 | 6.42× (rough estimate) |
| Brakes | Suspension | 78 | 5.38× (rough estimate) |
| Brakes | Visibility | 53 | 5.38× (rough estimate) |
| Brakes | Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 72 | 5.33× (rough estimate) |
| Suspension | Tyres | 21 | 4.57× (rough estimate) |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Suspension | 47 | 4.38× (rough estimate) |
| Brakes | Tyres | 25 | 4.32× (rough estimate) |
| Suspension | Visibility | 32 | 4.09× (rough estimate) |
| Body, chassis, structure | Brakes | 19 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Steering | Suspension | 18 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Body, chassis, structure | Suspension | 18 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Brakes | Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | 17 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Steering | 16 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Body, chassis, structure | Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 14 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Tyres | 14 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | 13 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Noise, emissions and leaks | 13 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Body, chassis, structure | Visibility | 13 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Brakes | Noise, emissions and leaks | 12 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | Suspension | 11 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | Visibility | 10 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Steering | Visibility | 10 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | Visibility | 9 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Tyres | Visibility | 9 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Body, chassis, structure | Steering | 7 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | Suspension | 7 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Body, chassis, structure | Tyres | 6 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Body, chassis, structure | Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | 5 | too few (rough estimate) |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | Steering | 5 | too few (rough estimate) |
Defects in «Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment» and «Visibility» appear together 7.53× more often than chance (55 co-occurrences in the same test; 66 pairs compared).
Lift = how many times more often both groups appear on the same test than if independent. A pair is listed from 5 tests with both faults; the lift is shown from 20, and called above chance only when its 95% interval excludes 1 (see rough estimates).
Bentley Brooklands MOT repair costs
The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £55.58 to £105.60, against £54.85 for the test itself.
bigger number = costs morepounds per test, MOT-failing faults only
| Component | Fails per 100 tests | Typical repair | Its price | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brakes | 13.8 (nat. 11.25) | Front brake pads (parts + labour, typical hatchback) | £150 | £20.70 |
| Suspension | 10.5 (nat. 15.36) | Suspension coil spring (single corner) | £180 | £18.90 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 9.1 (nat. 18.09) | Battery replacement (standard 12V lead-acid) | £140 | £12.74 |
| Tyres | 3.6 (nat. 8.7) | Tyre (single mid-range 16" fitted) | £90 | £3.24 |
Multiply how often each component fails on this model by what that repair usually costs, and you get the amount an owner should expect to budget per test for MOT-failing faults only — roughly £56 to £106, on top of the test fee itself. It is a budgeting figure, not a quote: the spread between a set of pads and a set of discs is most of the range.
Prices are modal quotes from a hand-kept catalogue of published UK garage guides — we do not scrape the booking sites, their terms forbid it, so this list is short and updated by hand with a source and date against each line. Each line prices one typical repair in that group, not a full remedy, and only groups our catalogue actually covers are counted. The contrast worth noticing is the second card: the legal maximum for the test has been £54.85 since 2010, while the repairs it uncovers have followed inflation the whole time.
For scale from a different direction: Warrantywise, which sees used-car warranty claims rather than test failures, puts the average claim at £2,052 across the ten highest-claim models it ranks and £539 for Honda, the lowest-claim make in its index (Warrantywise index 2026, 1.6 million claims, cars aged 3–15). Those sit an order of magnitude above the figures in this table, and the gap is the point: a warranty claim is a gearbox or an engine, which almost never fails an MOT, while the faults that do fail one are corrosion, lamps and tyres, which no warranty pays for. The two numbers answer different questions and neither replaces the other.
Bentley Brooklands rust problems: where they corrode
Salt-belt exposure is well below the reference at 15th percentile, against 50th percentile as the middle of published models.
higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points
This Bentley Brooklands has too few tests to judge for corrosion once age is held constant, and its owners live in areas that are gentler than most for the models we publish.
Corrosion is the one failure mode that is as much about geography as about the car. We keep the two apart on purpose: a model can look rusty simply because it is popular in Scotland, and a model can look clean simply because it is bought in Surrey. Blending them into a single score would hide which of the two is doing the work.
Exposure is this model's tests weighted by an area corrosion index built from frost days, salt load and distance to the coast — the composite validated at r = 0.42 against corrosion defects we actually record. It is published as a rank, not a raw score, because every mainstream model skews towards low-corrosion areas for the simple reason that most of Britain's cars are in the south. Susceptibility is standardised to the national age profile, so an old fleet does not get labelled a rusty model.
What will fail next on a Bentley Brooklands?
Brakes after a failure at age 20+ are highest at 16.6%; Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment after a passed at age 20+ are lowest at 3.8% — the gap is 12.8 percentage points.
higher = more likelypercentage is the observed transition probability
| Age | Last test | Most likely next failures | Cars tracked |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12-14 | passed | Visibility 4.0% | 149 (rough estimate) |
| 20+ | passed | Brakes 5.0% · Suspension 4.4% · Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment 3.8% | 1,031 |
| 20+ | advisory | Brakes 12.2% · Suspension 10.9% · Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment 7.9% | 403 (rough estimate) |
| 20+ | failure | Brakes 16.6% · Suspension 12.5% · Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment 11.7% | 343 (rough estimate) |
The same chains, cut differently: given a car's age and how its last test went, which component most often causes trouble at the following one.
The pattern that repeats across every family: a failure at one test roughly doubles the chance of a failure on the same component at the next one, and an advisory sits about half-way between a clean pass and a failure. Age bands in years; probabilities are per car, not per defect item.
Bentley Brooklands ownership: what six years of MOTs show
Odometer anomalies stand out at 2.2%.
higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points
Per mile driven, not per year. Dividing failures by the miles that actually went onto the odometers between consecutive tests gives 1.376 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 508 miles a year across 546 chains. This is the number to compare between models — an annual rate quietly rewards cars that barely leave the drive.
Odometer anomalies: 2.194% of 547 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 1,464 miles. We call this an anomaly and not fraud on purpose — instrument swaps, imports, unit mix-ups and keying errors all land in the same bucket. Obvious typos (drops under 100 miles or over 90% of the reading) are already excluded.
Bentley Brooklands safety recalls and how to check yours
DVSA recall campaigns stand out at 1.
bigger number = more recorded casescompare like-for-like scope, not sample size alone
| Reference | Launched | Vehicles | Concern |
|---|---|---|---|
R/2010/143 | 23/09/2010 | 359 | POTENTIAL OF PEDESTRIAN INJURY |
DVSA lists 1 safety recall campaigns for the Bentley Brooklands, covering roughly 359 vehicles in total. A recall is the manufacturer fixing a fault for free, so an open recall on your car costs nothing to clear.
Counter-intuitive, and measured on our own data: across the 25 families published here, more recalls go with a lower MOT Risk Index (r = −0.52). Heavily recalled models are not worse cars in the test bay — an active manufacturer removes the fault before it becomes an MOT failure.
Check whether a specific car has an outstanding recall — free, by registration — at DVSA's recall service. Source: DVSA vehicle safety recalls (check-vehicle-recalls.service.gov.uk), OGL.
Bentley Brooklands MOT: quick answers
Bentley Brooklands MOT Risk Index is well below the reference at 44.1, against 100 for a car with the same age profile.
below 100 is betterabove 100 is worse100 = normal for this model at that age
- What is the Bentley Brooklands first-time MOT pass rate?
- 84.2% of first attempts passed in 2024 (424 tests). This is the first-time figure: retests after repair are excluded. Basis: first-time, excluding retests.
- Why does this number differ from other sites?
- Other sites often report a pass rate that includes retests or counts all attempts. Our 15.8% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 424 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 44.1 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.
Compare the Bentley Brooklands with other cars
BMW M8 is highest at 44.1; Vauxhall VX220 is lowest at 43.7 — the gap is 0.4 points.
below 100 is betterabove 100 is worse100 = normal for this model at that age
Same brand
All Bentley MOT statisticsBentley Turbo MOT statsBentley Arnage MOT stats
Similar risk
BMW M8 (index 44.1)Honda S2000 (index 44.0)Vauxhall VX220 (index 43.7)
Same size class
how Reliant Scimitar compareshow BMW M8 compareshow Volvo S70 compares
By failure group
Bentley Brooklands body, chassis and structure failuresBentley Brooklands brakes failuresBentley Brooklands lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresBentley Brooklands noise, emissions and leaks failuresBentley Brooklands seat belts and airbags failuresBentley Brooklands steering failuresBentley Brooklands suspension failuresBentley Brooklands tyres failuresBentley Brooklands visibility failures
Data details & how to cite
Scope: class-4 vehicles (cars), initial tests only, outcomes pass / fail / fixed-on-the-spot at the station (PRS counts towards the failure rate — the defect was present at arrival). Index = observed initial failures ÷ failures expected for this fleet's exact age profile, ×100; margin of error is a 95% confidence interval. Covers ALL generations together — a 3-year-old and a 15-year-old are very different cars; a generation split is on the roadmap. Dataset release dataset_release_id=dvsa-2024-v2, frozen baseline; headline claim_id=family-stats:bentley-brooklands:dvsa-2024-v2. Full method: methodology.
Cite: MOT Risk Index (2026). Bentley Brooklands MOT statistics 2024 (data release dvsa-2024-v2; downloadable dataset motriskindex-families-2024-v5, doi:10.5281/zenodo.22975051). https://motriskindex.co.uk/cars/bentley-brooklands/ · Published 2026-07-30.