Citroen C3 Picasso — MOT statistics 2024

The Citroen C3 Picasso failed 30.71% of 6,392 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 131.3 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 31% more often than expected for its age.

Age-adjusted peer: Mercedes-Benz EQC (index 131.1) — the two published results are 0.2 index points apart.

Citroen C3 Picasso common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Suspension is well below the reference at 1.9 per 100 tests, against 5.3 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 C3 Picasso MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Brakes are highest at 42.6 per 100 tests; Lamps & electrical are lowest at 4.3 per 100 tests — the gap is 38.3 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: Citroen C3 Picasso 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 8.4 percentage points. The failure most likely to come back is visibility — 42.4% 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 33,763 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 matters here: matching on how much these are driven moves the figure by 17.5 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 the Citroen C3 Picasso 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 Citroen C3 Picasso perform as it gets older?

The C3 Picasso at age 14 stands out at 52.1%, against 40.4% for all vehicles of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–56%.

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

How dangerous are Citroen C3 Picasso MOT failures?

Major defects are well below the reference at 25.4 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 6.4 · Major 25.4 · Dangerous 7.7.

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 C3 Picasso MOT matter?

Oct is highest at 26.3%; May is lowest at 21.9% — the gap is 4.4 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 20%–33%.

bars: Citroen C3 Picasso · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 4.4 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 C3 Picasso average mileage by age

At age 8, the middle half of C3 Picassos runs from 30,961 miles to 58,773 miles, against 43,355 miles as the median.

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

Chart axes: car age, years · odometer scale 0–117k mi.

Does high mileage mean more Citroen C3 Picasso MOT failures at the same age?

Within the same age group, split by odometer (2024 MOTs), so this separates wear from age: at ages 6–9, 24% of those with under 40,000 miles failed first time versus 43.5% of those with 100,000–140,000 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 C3 Picasso has ~43,355 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Citroen C3 Picasso fails its MOT most

Kirkcaldy area is highest at 47.8%; Nottingham area is lowest at 7.4% — the gap is 40.4 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Toughest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Kirkcaldy (KY)	47.79%	+23.8 pp
Milton Keynes (MK)	36.43%	+12.4 pp
Truro (TR)	34.81%	+10.8 pp
Edinburgh (EH)	33.42%	+9.4 pp
Canterbury (CT)	32.82%	+8.8 pp

Easiest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Nottingham (NG)	7.4%	-16.6 pp
Southend-on-Sea (SS)	12.56%	-11.5 pp
Luton (LU)	15.93%	-8.1 pp
Walsall (WS)	16.11%	-7.9 pp
Bradford (BD)	16.99%	-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: 19%–33% failing.

Citroen C3 Picasso survival: which cars are still on the road

By age 15 is well below the reference at 1.7%, 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 11, only about 11% as many cars of this family present for MOT as at ages 4–6 (reference n≈5,498); survivors still fail at 39.4% vs 20.6% at age 4. Older cars that still appear are a selected subset — weaker ones have already left.

How many miles does a Citroen C3 Picasso last?

100,000+ miles stands out at 2.1%.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Of 33,765 tests of this family with a usable odometer in 2024, 2.1% had reached 100k miles. This is a cross-section of cars still presenting for MOT, not a full birth cohort.

How many years is a Citroen C3 Picasso likely to last?

Bought at age 5 is highest at 3.4 years; Bought at age 8 is lowest at 1.3 years — the gap is 2.1 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 1.3 expected years of further MOT-present life. The curve is observed only until age 11, so the true figure is likely higher.

Citroen C3 Picasso faults that come together

Steering + Suspension stand out at 12.79×, against 1.00× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Steering» and «Suspension» appear together 12.79× more often than chance (34 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).

Is low mileage better for a Citroen C3 Picasso?

Cars driven under 5,000 miles a year is well below the reference at 18.9%, against 30.6% 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 18.9% vs 30.6% for 8–12k miles/year — 11.7 pp lower (n_low=6,913, n_normal=3,108). 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. Diesel alone: 19.1% low-use vs 31.0% normal (-11.8 pp).

Which Citroen C3 Picasso engine is best?

diesel 1.5–1.8 is highest at 104.7; petrol 1.5–1.8 is lowest at 84.8 — the gap is 19.9 points.

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

Splitting this model by fuel alone hides the thing that actually differs. Within the same badge, the diesel 1.5–1.8 runs at 104.7 against this model's own age norm while the petrol 1.0–1.2 runs at 92 — a spread of 12.7 points between two cars that share a name.

Read this one with more care than the rest of the page. Age is held constant, but who buys which engine is not: the largest capacity in a range is often a performance or executive variant that is garaged, cherished and lightly driven, while the smallest is frequently a fleet or entry car worked hard from new. The gap below is real in the test records; how much of it is the engine and how much is the owner, this data cannot separate. Bands under 100 tests are not shown; bands under 5,000 tests are rough estimates.

Citroen C3 Picasso MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £31.95 to £60.70, 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 £32 to £61, 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 C3 Picasso running costs for a fleet

Vehicles failing at age 10 stand out at 36.0%, against 28.0% at age 7, tested in the same year.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

The number a fleet manager needs is not the failure rate, it is the year the car starts costing more. Between cars aged 7 and cars aged 8, both tested in 2024, the failure rate of this model is 3.76 percentage points higher — the steepest one-year step in this cross-section of different cars, and a natural planning point for replacement.

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.

Citroen C3 Picasso rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility is well below the reference at 0.3×, against 1.00× for the national age-standardised rate.

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

This Citroen C3 Picasso fails on corrosion much less often than average once age is held constant, and its owners live in areas that are saltier than most for the models we publish. Both point the same way and reinforce each other: it resists corrosion even though its owners live in saltier areas than most.

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 C3 Picasso advisory become a failure?

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment are highest at 15.1%; Non-component advisories are lowest at 0.0% — the gap is 15.1 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 15 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12 months and roughly 6,500 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 C3 Picasso?

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment after a failure at age 12-14 are highest at 28.4%; Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment after a passed at age <3 are lowest at 2.7% — the gap is 25.7 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 C3 Picasso ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The same-day re-test pass rate is highest at 62.8%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 1.3% — the gap is 61.6 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 5,585 failures followed through to their re-test, 62.83% were repaired and passed the same day and 35.92% within ten days; the median gap is 0 days. 11,379 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 0.461 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 4,651 miles a year across 6,407 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. 41.67% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 26.93% 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: 0.593% of 6,409 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 13,691 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 C3 Picasso 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 Citroen C3 Picasso, covering roughly 57,215 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.

Citroen C3 Picasso inspection results in other countries

Finland Katsastus stands out at 45.0%, against 26.3% 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.

Useful as a cross-check on the UK defect table above: the categories are named differently, but a component that dominates in both regimes is a genuine weak point of the model rather than an artefact of one country's testing style.

Worth dwelling on how mundane the top of that list is: tyre pressure, tread depth, headlight aim. The Dutch APK records 1.414 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 Citroen C3 Picasso 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.; Traficom — Periodic inspections of cars by model / by model and fault object 2024, CC BY 4.0; Statens vegvesen — Periodisk kjøretøykontroll (PKK) 2024, CC BY 4.0. Adapted; licences and full notice.

Citroen C3 Picasso MOT: quick answers

Citroen C3 Picasso MOT Risk Index stands out at 131.3, 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 C3 Picasso first-time MOT pass rate?

69.29% of first attempts passed in 2024 (6,392 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 30.71% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 6,392 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 131.3 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Citroen C3 Picasso with other cars

Nissan Primastar is highest at 131.4; Renault Megane is lowest at 131.0 — 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 C4 MOT statsCitroen DS4 MOT stats

Similar risk

Nissan Primastar (index 131.4)Mercedes-Benz EQC (index 131.1)Renault Megane (index 131.0)

Same size class

how Volkswagen ID.4 compareshow Audi A2 compareshow Fiat Grande Punto compares

By build year

Citroen C3 Picasso 2013Citroen C3 Picasso 2014Citroen C3 Picasso 2015Citroen C3 Picasso 2016Citroen C3 Picasso 2017

By area

Citroen C3 Picasso MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

Citroen C3 Picasso body, chassis and structure failuresCitroen C3 Picasso brakes failuresCitroen C3 Picasso vehicle identification failuresCitroen C3 Picasso lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresCitroen C3 Picasso noise, emissions and leaks failuresCitroen C3 Picasso road wheels failuresCitroen C3 Picasso seat belts and airbags failuresCitroen C3 Picasso steering failuresCitroen C3 Picasso suspension failuresCitroen C3 Picasso tyres failuresCitroen C3 Picasso visibility failures

Inspections abroad

Citroen C3 Picasso in NorwayCitroen C3 Picasso in FinlandCitroen C3 Picasso in the Netherlands