Cupra Leon — MOT statistics 2024

The Cupra Leon failed 17.81% of 949 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 145.4 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 45% more often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.

Age-adjusted peer: DS DS4 (index 145.6) — the two published results are 0.2 index points apart.

Cupra Leon common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Tyres stand out at 19.4 per 100 tests, against 5.6 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.

Cupra Leon MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Tyres are highest at 43.4 per 100 tests; Suspension is lowest at 5.5 per 100 tests — the gap is 37.9 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: Cupra Leon 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.

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 1,002 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 10.0 points — this fleet works harder than the vehicles it is measured against, so the age-only view penalises 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 Cupra Leon 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 Cupra Leon perform as it gets older?

The Leon at age 3 stands out at 17.8%, against 12.4% for all vehicles of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–19%.

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

How dangerous are Cupra Leon MOT failures?

Major defects are well below the reference at 14.6 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 2.6 · Major 14.6 · Dangerous 13.6.

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

Does the month of a Cupra Leon MOT matter?

Feb is highest at 25.0%; May is lowest at 13.3% — the gap is 11.7 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 12%–33%.

bars: Cupra Leon · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 11.7 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.

Cupra Leon average mileage by age

At age 3, the middle half of Leons runs from 18,586 miles to 33,580 miles, against 24,988 miles as the median.

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

Does high mileage mean more Cupra Leon MOT failures at the same age?

Within the same age group, split by odometer (2024 MOTs), so this separates wear from age: at ages 3–5, 17.1% of those with under 40,000 miles failed first time versus 23.5% of those with 40,000–70,000 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 3-year-old Leon has ~24,988 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Cupra Leon fails its MOT most

Too few tests in any single postcode area to name one, so this is the wider picture across 1,004 tests, 2019-2024.

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.

Cupra Leon survival: which cars are still on the road

By age 4 is close to the reference at 100.0%, against 100.0% at the ages 4–6 reference level.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Ages 4–6 average 51 tests, too few for an 'only X% as many' claim. The rows are the counts of cars still coming to an MOT.

How many years is a Cupra Leon likely to last?

estimateObserved only until age 4. The curve does not run five years past the stated age with the share still tested under 50%, so no 'years left' number is given.

Cupra Leon faults that come together

Defects in «Brakes» and «Tyres» were seen together in 8 tests (55 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).

Cupra Leon rust problems: where they corrode

Salt-belt exposure stands out at 78th percentile, against 50th percentile as the middle of published models.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

This Cupra Leon has too few tests to judge for corrosion once age is held constant, and its owners live in areas that are saltier 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 Cupra Leon?

Tyres after a passed at age <3 stand out at 14.6%.

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.

Cupra Leon MOT: quick answers

Cupra Leon MOT Risk Index stands out at 145.4, 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 Cupra Leon first-time MOT pass rate?

82.19% of first attempts passed in 2024 (949 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 17.81% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 949 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 145.4 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Cupra Leon with other cars

Vauxhall Combo is highest at 145.6; Cupra Leon is lowest at 145.4 — the gap is 0.2 points.

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

Similar risk

DS DS4 (index 145.6)Peugeot Partner (index 145.6)Vauxhall Combo (index 145.6)

Same size class

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By failure group

Cupra Leon tyres failures