Citroen 2CV — MOT statistics 2024

The Citroen 2CV failed 28.45% of 2,559 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 82.0 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 18% less often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care. But this fleet is driven far less than average: matched on annual mileage as well as age, using 2019-2024 test chains rather than 2024 alone, the figure is 116.5, on the other side of normal. Both numbers below.

Age-adjusted peer: Peugeot 108 (index 81.9) — the two published results are 0.1 index points apart.

Citroen 2CV common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment stand out at 40.8 per 100 tests, against 29.3 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.

Citroen 2CV MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Suspension is highest at 30.7 per 100 tests; Steering is lowest at 5.1 per 100 tests — the gap is 25.6 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.

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 4.4 percentage points. The failure most likely to come back is visibility — 29.6% 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 14,135 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.

This is the rare case where usage changes the answer, not just the number: once you compare these against vehicles driven as little, the car moves from one side of normal to the other. Read the mileage-matched figure, not the headline one. 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 Citroen 2CV perform as it gets older?

The 2CV at age 20 is well below the reference at 27.7%, against 41.0% 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 Citroen 2CV MOT failures?

Major defects stand out at 89.9 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 12.3 · Major 89.8 · Dangerous 9.6.

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

Does the month of a Citroen 2CV MOT matter?

Jan is highest at 34.4%; Mar is lowest at 28.5% — the gap is 5.9 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 27%–36%.

bars: Citroen 2CV · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 5.9 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.

Citroen 2CV average mileage by age

At age 20+, the middle half of 2CVs runs from 23,109 miles to 74,308 miles, against 51,590 miles as the median.

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

Does high mileage mean more Citroen 2CV 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+, 24.8% of those with under 40,000 miles failed first time versus 25.3% of those with 70,000–100,000 miles.No clear mileage gap inside this age group, among cars still being tested.

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

A typical 20+-year-old 2CV has ~51,590 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Citroen 2CV fails its MOT most

London SW area is highest at 60.0%; Cambridge area is lowest at 10.0% — the gap is 50.0 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Toughest areas	% failing	vs model overall
London SW (SW)	60%	+29.0 pp
Plymouth (PL)	51.72%	+20.7 pp
Truro (TR)	46.08%	+15.0 pp
Dorchester (DT)	45.89%	+14.9 pp
Hereford (HR)	44.98%	+13.9 pp

Easiest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Cambridge (CB)	10%	-21.0 pp
Twickenham (TW)	12.6%	-18.4 pp
Gloucester (GL)	13.18%	-17.9 pp
Manchester (M)	16.45%	-14.6 pp
Preston (PR)	16.95%	-14.1 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: 13%–45% failing.

Citroen 2CV faults that come together

Seatbelts & SRS + Tyres stand out at 4.84×, against 1.00× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Brakes» and «Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment» appear together 3.76× more often than chance (772 co-occurrences in the same test; lift≥1.3, n≥500).

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).

Citroen 2CV MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £101.34 to £192.55, 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 £101 to £193, 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.

Citroen 2CV rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility is well below the reference at <0.1×, against 1.00× for the national age-standardised rate.

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

This Citroen 2CV virtually never fails on corrosion once age is held constant, and its owners live in areas that are about typical 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 Citroen 2CV advisory become a failure?

Body, chassis, structure are highest at 18.3%; Noise, emissions and leaks are lowest at 5.2% — the gap is 13.1 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 18 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12.2 months and roughly 524 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 Citroen 2CV?

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment after a failure at age 20+ are highest at 23.9%; Suspension after a passed at age 20+ is lowest at 4.9% — the gap is 19.0 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.

Citroen 2CV ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 65.5%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 11.6% — the gap is 53.9 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 3,072 failures followed through to their re-test, 22.88% were repaired and passed the same day and 65.53% within ten days; the median gap is 3 days. 10,210 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 2.471 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 465 miles a year across 3,433 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. 42.11% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 24.47% 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: 3.193% of 3,476 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 10,693 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.

Citroen 2CV MOT: quick answers

Citroen 2CV MOT Risk Index is well below the reference at 82.0, 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 Citroen 2CV first-time MOT pass rate?

71.55% of first attempts passed in 2024 (2,559 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 28.45% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 2,559 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 82.0 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Citroen 2CV with other cars

Citroen 2CV is highest at 82.0; Mitsubishi Lancer is lowest at 81.6 — the gap is 0.4 points.

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

Same brand

All Citroen MOT statisticsCitroen C1 MOT statsCitroen C3 Aircross MOT stats

Similar risk

Peugeot 108 (index 81.9)BMW X3 (index 81.7)Mitsubishi Lancer (index 81.6)

Same size class

how Mercedes-Benz 190 compareshow Nissan Serena compareshow Aston Martin DB11 compares

By area

Citroen 2CV MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

Citroen 2CV body, chassis and structure failuresCitroen 2CV brakes failuresCitroen 2CV vehicle identification failuresCitroen 2CV lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresCitroen 2CV noise, emissions and leaks failuresCitroen 2CV seat belts and airbags failuresCitroen 2CV steering failuresCitroen 2CV suspension failuresCitroen 2CV tyres failuresCitroen 2CV visibility failures