BMW M5 — MOT statistics 2024

The BMW M5 failed 12.7% of 3,898 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 36.7 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 63% less often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.

Age-adjusted peer: Porsche Cayman (index 37.3) — the two published results are 0.6 index points apart.

BMW M5 common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment are well below the reference at 5.4 per 100 tests, against 22.0 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.

Named defects ranked by how much more often they appear than the national average — not by raw rate.

BMW M5 MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Tyres are highest at 26.0 per 100 tests; Body & structure are lowest at 2.5 per 100 tests — the gap is 23.5 per 100 tests.

higher bar = flagged more oftenadvisory items per 100 initial tests

Advisories are wear the tester noted but didn't fail — what will need money soon.

Tyres, brakes and suspension: BMW M5 against cars of the same age

Failing items per 100 initial tests, 2019-2024. The comparison group is every petrol or diesel car tested at the same age, so weight and drivetrain show up rather than fleet age.

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.

A failed test raises next year's chance of failing again by 6.2 percentage points. The failure most likely to come back is seat belts and supplementary restraint systems — 28.3% 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 25,542 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.

Mileage changes little here (+0.9 points): this fleet is driven about as much as the vehicles it is compared with. 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 the BMW M5 compares with cars of its own age and size

Not against the whole fleet — against cars of the same size class tested at the same age, 2019-2024.

Raw first-time failure rates within each age, so fleet age cannot flatter either side. A positive difference means this model fails more often than its own class at that age.

How does the BMW M5 perform as it gets older?

The M5 at age 17 is well below the reference at 8.7%, against 43.1% for all vehicles of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–47%.

Takeaway: solid line: this family; dashed: all cars.

How dangerous are BMW M5 MOT failures?

Major defects are well below the reference at 23.5 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 6.7 · Major 23.5 · Dangerous 5.2.

Per 100 tests on this family. National average: Minor 14.2 · Major 52.8 · Dangerous 11.2 per 100.

Does the month of a BMW M5 MOT matter?

Feb is highest at 16.2%; Mar is lowest at 13.9% — the gap is 2.3 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 12%–33%.

bars: BMW M5 · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 2.3 percentage points — booking month barely matters for this family. 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.

BMW M5 average mileage by age

At age 8, the middle half of M5s runs from 39,936 miles to 65,720 miles, against 51,213 miles as the median.

further right = more milesmedian is the typical car; band is p25–p75

Chart axes: car age, years · odometer scale 0–152k mi.

Does high mileage mean more BMW M5 MOT failures at the same age?

Within the same age group, split by odometer (2024 MOTs), so this separates wear from age: at ages 15+, 9.1% of those with 40,000–70,000 miles failed first time versus 19% of those with over 140,000 miles.Inside this age group, higher mileage goes with more failures.

line: median · band: middle half of the fleet (p25–p75)

A typical 8-year-old M5 has ~51,213 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the BMW M5 fails its MOT most

Aberdeen area is highest at 29.4%; London E area is lowest at 5.6% — the gap is 23.9 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Toughest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Aberdeen (AB)	29.43%	+14.7 pp
Gloucester (GL)	26.62%	+11.9 pp
Newport (NP)	26.03%	+11.3 pp
Bath (BA)	24.86%	+10.1 pp
Watford (WD)	22.29%	+7.5 pp

Easiest areas	% failing	vs model overall
London E (E)	5.56%	-9.2 pp
Uxbridge (UB)	6.59%	-8.2 pp
Twickenham (TW)	6.85%	-7.9 pp
Liverpool (L)	7.48%	-7.3 pp
Ilford (IG)	7.76%	-7.0 pp

Every dot is a postcode area — size = how many were tested there, colour = share failing. These figures are not age-adjusted: coastal and rural areas often run older fleets and salted roads, so higher raw fail rates do not automatically mean a worse local stock of this model.

Map labels: Scotland · N. England · Wales · London · S. West. Colour scale: 7%–22% failing.

BMW M5 survival: which cars are still on the road

By age 19 is well below the reference at 71.5%, against 100.0% at the ages 4–6 reference level.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · survival vs ages 4–6 · scale 0–105%.

By age 19, only about 72% as many cars of this family present for MOT as at ages 4–6 (reference n≈1,448); survivors still fail at 22.2% vs 8.2% at age 4. Older cars that still appear are a selected subset — weaker ones have already left.

How many miles does a BMW M5 last?

100,000+ miles is highest at 23.7%; 150,000+ miles is lowest at 5.6% — the gap is 18.1 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Of 25,740 tests of this family with a usable odometer in 2024, 23.7% had reached 100k miles, 5.6% had reached 150k miles. This is a cross-section of cars still presenting for MOT, not a full birth cohort.

How many years is a BMW M5 likely to last?

Bought at age 5 is highest at 11.5 years; Bought at age 15 is lowest at 4.7 years — the gap is 6.8 years.

bigger number = longer remaining lifeyears on the observed survival curve

estimateEstimate only — not a warranty: a typical 10-year-old example of this family has at least 6.6 expected years of further MOT-present life. The curve is observed only until age 19, so the true figure is likely higher.

BMW M5 faults that come together

Body & structure + Brakes stand out at 11.32×, against 1.00× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Body, chassis, structure» and «Brakes» appear together 11.32× more often than chance (60 co-occurrences in the same test; 78 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).

Is low mileage better for a BMW M5?

Cars driven under 5,000 miles a year is well below the reference at 9.7%, against 13.9% for cars driven 8,000–12,000 miles a year.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

At matched ages 5–14, cars averaging under 5k miles/year fail at 9.7% vs 13.9% for 8–12k miles/year — 4.2 pp lower (n_low=3,344, n_normal=3,840). In this family low annual use is associated with fewer MOT fails, not more — the ‘garage queen’ penalty is not visible in overall fail rates.

BMW M5 MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £39.90 to £75.81, against £54.85 for the test itself.

bigger number = costs morepounds per test, MOT-failing faults only

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 £40 to £76, 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.

BMW M5 running costs for a fleet

Vehicles failing at age 10 stand out at 12.0%, against 11.0% at age 8, tested in the same year.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

No single year stands out as the point where this model starts costing more: the year-to-year steps in its failure rate are too small or rest on too few tests to name one (D1 rule: a step is named only with at least 2,000 tests on both sides and a jump above 3 percentage points).

Repair spend uses the same modal prices as the section above, so it inherits the same limits: one typical repair per component group, not a full remedy. Downtime is the gap between the failed test and the passed re-test, which is the window a vehicle is legally off the road.

BMW M5 rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility is well below the reference at 0.12×, against 1.00× for the national age-standardised rate.

above 1.0× = rusts more than averagebelow 1.0× = rusts less

This BMW M5 virtually never fails on 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.

Does a BMW M5 advisory become a failure?

Suspension is highest at 13.5%; Non-component advisories are lowest at 0.0% — the gap is 13.5 percentage points.

higher = more likelypercentage is the observed transition probability

chance the same component fails at the next MOT, given an advisory now

This is the question an advisory note actually raises, and it needs six years of test history to answer. We followed the same vehicles from one MOT to the next across 2019–2024 and measured how often a component that was merely advised came back as a genuine failure at the next test.

Read it as a budgeting horizon, not a prophecy: the most likely component above turns into a failure for about 14 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12.3 months and roughly 2,056 miles. The rest were repaired, sold, scrapped, or simply held. Rows with fewer than 500 tracked advisories are not shown.

What will fail next on a BMW M5?

Suspension after a failure at age 20+ is highest at 13.0%; Suspension after a passed at age 3-5 is lowest at 1.4% — the gap is 11.6 percentage points.

higher = more likelypercentage is the observed transition probability

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.

BMW M5 ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 71.5%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 6.9% — the gap is 64.7 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 2,579 failures followed through to their re-test, 21.6% were repaired and passed the same day and 71.54% within ten days; the median gap is 2 days. 5,223 defect items were cleared in the process.

Per mile driven, not per year. Dividing failures by the miles that actually went onto the odometers between consecutive tests gives 0.365 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 2,627 miles a year across 5,055 chains. This is the number to compare between models — an annual rate quietly rewards cars that barely leave the drive.

Two populations hide inside one model. 63.39% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 15.29% carried the same advisory three times or more — the same fault, noted, ignored, noted again. When you buy used you are buying one of those two histories, and the MOT record shows which.

Odometer anomalies: 1.382% of 5,065 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 32,650 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.

BMW M5 safety recalls and how to check yours

DVSA recall campaigns stand out at 11.

bigger number = more recorded casescompare like-for-like scope, not sample size alone

recall campaigns launched per year

DVSA lists 11 safety recall campaigns for the BMW M5, covering roughly 258,410 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.

BMW M5 technical service bulletins: what dealers are told

US market, BMW M5, model years 2015–2022 only. A count of bulletins, not a UK failure rate.

NHTSA manufacturer communications are 474.

bigger number = more recorded dealer communicationsnot affected vehicles or confirmed faults

These are the issues the manufacturer fixes quietly: service communications sent to dealers without a public recall campaign. They show what the service network has been told even when the issue never became news.

United States · NHTSA manufacturer communications

Caveat worth stating plainly: this is NHTSA data about US-specification cars. British cars sold under the same name often use different gearboxes, engines and equipment, so a bulletin may describe a component that was never fitted here. The file counts dealer communications, not affected vehicles or confirmed failures, and it cannot tell you whether an individual UK car has the issue. A communication can carry more than one subject tag, so topic counts do not have to add up to the total. Source: NHTSA Manufacturer Communications API (US-market vehicles; queried model years 2015-2022). Licence: U.S. Government work / public domain · retrieved 2026-09-25.

BMW M5 owner complaints: what goes wrong

US market, BMW M5, model years 2015–2022 only. A count of owner complaints, not a UK failure rate; NHTSA has no UK denominator.

Engine (not MOT-tested) is highest at 11; Brakes are lowest at 1 — the gap is 10.

bigger number = more recorded casescompare like-for-like scope, not sample size alone

Two different populations answering two different questions: the MOT records what an inspector can measure once a year, the complaint file records what annoyed or frightened an owner on the road. A component high in one column and absent from the other is the interesting case — driver-assistance and electronics dominate complaints while almost never appearing as an MOT failure item.

US owners have filed 21 complaints about the equivalent BMW M5 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, including 0 that mention a crash, 1 a fire and 0 an injury. These are owner reports, not verified findings — but they are the only large public record of what drivers themselves notice, and they cover the years between MOT tests.

Caveat worth stating plainly: US-specification cars, self-selected reporters, no denominator — complaint counts scale with how many cars were sold there and how motivated owners are to file. The mechanical gap matters as much as the statistical one: American cars of the same name often carry different gearboxes, engines and equipment — automatics where Britain buys manuals — so a drivetrain complaint filed in Ohio may describe a part that was never fitted here. Read the ranking inside a model, not between models, and treat drivetrain entries with particular caution. Source: NHTSA ODI consumer complaints (US market, public domain) — US-spec vehicles, indicative only.

BMW M5 inspection results in other countries

Netherlands APK is well below the reference at 27.3%, against 50.8% nationally.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

The verdict is consistent across every regime where the difference is clear, which is the strongest form this comparison takes: independent inspectorates, different rulebooks, same direction of travel.

Worth dwelling on how mundane the top of that list is: tyre pressure, tread depth, headlight aim. The Dutch APK records 0.535 defects per inspection against a much higher national failure rate than Britain's, and the reason is not that Dutch cars are worse — it is that the two regimes draw the line between "note it" and "fail it" in different places. Codes are the RDW's own; the English wording here is our translation of the Dutch original.

Britain is not the only country that inspects every car every year, and the BMW M5 is on the road in all of them. Each national regime writes its own rules, so the pass rates below are not comparable to each other — what does travel across a border is whether a model sits above or below its own country's average.

Rows with fewer than 500 inspections are not published. Sources: RDW open data — Meldingen Keuringsinstantie + Geconstateerde Gebreken + Gekentekende voertuigen (2024), CC0. Not an RDW endorsement.. Adapted; licences and full notice.

BMW M5 MOT: quick answers

BMW M5 MOT Risk Index is well below the reference at 36.7, 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 BMW M5 first-time MOT pass rate?

87.3% of first attempts passed in 2024 (3,898 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 12.7% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 3,898 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 36.7 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the BMW M5 with other cars

Lotus Elise is highest at 39.2; Porsche 911 is lowest at 35.8 — the gap is 3.4 points.

below 100 is betterabove 100 is worse100 = normal for this model at that age

Same brand

All BMW MOT statisticsBMW M3 MOT statsBMW M2 MOT stats

Similar risk

Porsche Cayman (index 37.3)Porsche 911 (index 35.8)Lotus Elise (index 39.2)

Same size class

how Audi R8 compareshow Alfa Romeo Stelvio compareshow Honda Fit compares

By build year

BMW M5 2011BMW M5 2012BMW M5 2013BMW M5 2014BMW M5 2015BMW M5 2016

By area

BMW M5 MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

BMW M5 body, chassis and structure failuresBMW M5 brakes failuresBMW M5 vehicle identification failuresBMW M5 lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresBMW M5 noise, emissions and leaks failuresBMW M5 road wheels failuresBMW M5 seat belts and airbags failuresBMW M5 steering failuresBMW M5 suspension failuresBMW M5 tyres failuresBMW M5 visibility failures

Inspections abroad

BMW M5 in the Netherlands

• BMW 8 Series