Ford F150 — MOT statistics 2024

The Ford F150 failed 20.97% of 725 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 59.3 (100 = expected for its age profile). This pickup fails its MOT about 41% less often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.

Age-adjusted peer: Dodge Ram (index 50.3) — the two published results are 9.0 index points apart.

Ford F150 common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Suspension is well below the reference at 9.6 per 100 tests, against 32.9 per 100 tests across UK vans and pickups of the same ages.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

family vs national — matched to UK vans and pickups 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.

Ford F150 MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Brakes are highest at 29.3 per 100 tests; Steering is lowest at 5.4 per 100 tests — the gap is 23.9 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.

If a pickup 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 5.3 percentage points. The failure most likely to come back is noise, emissions and leaks — 34.5% 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 pickup with vehicles of the same age, and then with vehicles of the same age and the same annual mileage, 2019-2024, on 4,101 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 (+0.7 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 Ford F150 compares with cars of its own age and size

Not against the whole fleet — against other light commercials 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 Ford F150 perform as it gets older?

The F150 at age 20 is well below the reference at 23.3%, against 41.0% for all vehicles of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

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

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

How dangerous are Ford F150 MOT failures?

Dangerous defects are well below the reference at 5.9 per 100 tests, against 11.2 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 17.0 · Major 55.4 · Dangerous 5.8.

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

Does the month of a Ford F150 MOT matter?

Mar is highest at 23.7%; Dec is lowest at 15.7% — the gap is 8.0 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 14%–33%.

bars: Ford F150 · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 8.0 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.

Ford F150 average mileage by age

At age 20+, the middle half of F150s runs from 63,444 miles to 130,848 miles, against 92,433 miles as the median.

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

Does high mileage mean more Ford F150 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+, 17.1% of those with 40,000–70,000 miles failed first time versus 30.1% of those with over 140,000 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 F150 has ~92,433 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Ford F150 fails its MOT most

Ipswich area is highest at 25.0%; Southend-on-Sea area is lowest at 5.3% — the gap is 19.7 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

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.

Ford F150 survival: which cars are still on the road

By age 19 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

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

By age 19, at least as many cars of this family present for MOT as at ages 4–6 (reference n≈143): the older fleet has not thinned out here, so there is no survivor selection to allow for.

How many miles does a Ford F150 last?

100,000+ miles is highest at 38.4%; 150,000+ miles is lowest at 13.8% — the gap is 24.6 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Of 4,248 tests of this family with a usable odometer in 2024, 38.4% had reached 100k miles, 13.8% 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 Ford F150 likely to last?

Bought at age 5 is highest at 13.4 years; Bought at age 15 is lowest at 4.5 years — the gap is 8.9 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 11.3 expected years of further MOT-present life. The curve is observed only until age 19, so the true figure is likely higher.

Ford F150 faults that come together

Body & structure + Emissions & leaks stand out at 9.24×, against 1.00× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Body, chassis, structure» and «Noise, emissions and leaks» appear together 9.24× more often than chance (35 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 Ford F150?

Cars driven under 5,000 miles a year is well below the reference at 13.3%, against 16.8% 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 13.3% vs 16.8% for 8–12k miles/year — 3.4 pp, interval includes no difference (n_low=104, n_normal=103). The gap interval includes no difference, so no higher/lower claim is made.

Ford F150 MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £90.36 to £171.68, 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 £90 to £172, 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.

Ford F150 rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility is well below the reference at 0.34×, against 1.00× for the national age-standardised rate.

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

This Ford F150 fails on corrosion much less often than average 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 Ford F150 advisory become a failure?

Brakes stand out at 12.0%.

higher = more likelypercentage is the observed transition probability

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 12 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12.2 months and roughly 1,622 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 Ford F150?

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment after a failure at age 20+ are highest at 24.2%; Noise, emissions and leaks after a passed at age 3-5 are lowest at 2.1% — the gap is 22.1 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.

Ford F150 ownership: what six years of MOTs show

Clean three-test streak is highest at 51.2%; Repeated the same advisory is lowest at 19.7% — the gap is 31.6 percentage points.

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 0.475 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 1,848 miles a year across 917 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. 51.24% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 19.68% 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: 15.699% of 930 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 43,774 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.

Ford F150 technical service bulletins: what dealers are told

US market, Ford F-150, model years 2016–2020 only. A count of bulletins, not a UK failure rate.

NHTSA manufacturer communications are 2.

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.

Ford F150 owner complaints: what goes wrong

US market, Ford F-150, model years 2016–2020 only. A count of owner complaints, not a UK failure rate; NHTSA has no UK denominator.

Transmission (not MOT-tested) is highest at 215; Visibility is lowest at 4 — the gap is 211.

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 282 complaints about the equivalent Ford F150 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, including 5 that mention a crash, 2 a fire and 3 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.

Ford F150 MOT: quick answers

Ford F150 MOT Risk Index is well below the reference at 59.3, 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 Ford F150 first-time MOT pass rate?

79.03% of first attempts passed in 2024 (725 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 20.97% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 725 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 59.3 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Ford F150 with other cars

Mercedes-Benz S-Class is highest at 59.4; Jaguar I-Pace is lowest at 59.1 — the gap is 0.3 points.

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

Same brand

All Ford MOT statisticsFord Escort MOT statsFord Granada MOT stats

Similar risk

Toyota GT86 (index 59.3)Mercedes-Benz S-Class (index 59.4)Jaguar I-Pace (index 59.1)

Same size class

how Ferrari F355 compareshow Toyota Aqua compareshow Rover 216 compares

By area

Ford F150 MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

Ford F150 body, chassis and structure failuresFord F150 brakes failuresFord F150 vehicle identification failuresFord F150 lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresFord F150 noise, emissions and leaks failuresFord F150 seat belts and airbags failuresFord F150 steering failuresFord F150 suspension failuresFord F150 tyres failuresFord F150 visibility failures