Ford Freda — MOT statistics 2024

The Ford Freda failed 48.95% of 858 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 128.0 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 28% more often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.

Age-adjusted peer: Daewoo Matiz (index 127.8) — the two published results are 0.2 index points apart.

Ford Freda common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Suspension stands out at 67.2 per 100 tests, against 26.3 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.

Ford Freda MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Suspension is highest at 52.1 per 100 tests; Non-component advisories are lowest at 5.6 per 100 tests — the gap is 46.5 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.

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 lowers next year's chance of failing again by 11.3 percentage points. The failure most likely to come back is lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment — 34.4% 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 5,717 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 10.8 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 Ford Freda 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 Ford Freda perform as it gets older?

The Freda at age 20 stands out at 48.7%, 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 0–53%.

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

How dangerous are Ford Freda MOT failures?

Major defects stand out at 173.2 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 38.0 · Major 173.2 · Dangerous 15.1.

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 Freda MOT matter?

Oct is highest at 51.4%; Dec is lowest at 43.2% — the gap is 8.2 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 27%–53%.

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

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 8.2 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 Freda average mileage by age

At age 20+, the middle half of Fredas runs from 93,047 miles to 167,297 miles, against 129,184 miles as the median.

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

Does high mileage mean more Ford Freda 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+, 40.8% of those with 70,000–100,000 miles failed first time versus 54.4% 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 Freda has ~129,184 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Ford Freda fails its MOT most

Bournemouth area is highest at 62.6%; Reading area is lowest at 26.2% — the gap is 36.4 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 Freda 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: car age, years · survival vs ages 4–6 · scale 0–105%.

Ages 4–6 average 76 tests, too few for an 'only X% as many' claim. The rows are the counts of cars still coming to an MOT.

How many miles does a Ford Freda last?

100,000+ miles is highest at 80.9%; 200,000+ miles is lowest at 15.5% — the gap is 65.4 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Of 5,799 tests of this family with a usable odometer in 2024, 80.9% had reached 100k miles, 44.4% had reached 150k miles, 15.5% had reached 200k miles. This is a cross-section of cars still presenting for MOT, not a full birth cohort.

How many years is a Ford Freda likely to last?

Bought at age 5 is highest at 18.1 years; Bought at age 15 is lowest at 4.5 years — the gap is 13.6 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 9.5 expected years of further MOT-present life. The curve is observed only until age 19, so the true figure is likely higher.

Ford Freda faults that come together

Brakes + Seatbelts & SRS stand out at 2.91×, against 1.00× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Body, chassis, structure» and «Suspension» appear together 1.88× more often than chance (515 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).

Which Ford Freda engine is best?

diesel over 2.0 is highest at 103.5; petrol 1.8–2.0 is lowest at 90.6 — the gap is 12.9 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 over 2.0 runs at 103.5 against this model's own age norm while the petrol 1.8–2.0 runs at 90.6 — a spread of 12.9 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.

Ford Freda MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £230.42 to £437.80, 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 £230 to £438, 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 Freda rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility stands out at 10.52×, against 1.00× for the national age-standardised rate.

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

This Ford Freda fails on corrosion far more often than average 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.

Does a Ford Freda advisory become a failure?

Suspension is highest at 34.9%; Noise, emissions and leaks are lowest at 6.2% — the gap is 28.7 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 35 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12.1 months and roughly 3,665 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 Freda?

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment after a failure at age 12-14 are highest at 36.3%; Brakes after a passed at age 12-14 are lowest at 8.4% — the gap is 27.9 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 Freda ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 69.1%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 11.7% — the gap is 57.4 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 1,952 failures followed through to their re-test, 19.26% were repaired and passed the same day and 69.06% within ten days; the median gap is 3 days. 7,202 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 0.852 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 2,919 miles a year across 1,075 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. 26.7% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 44.43% 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: 35.978% of 1,084 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 61,049 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 Freda MOT: quick answers

Ford Freda MOT Risk Index stands out at 128.0, 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 Ford Freda first-time MOT pass rate?

51.05% of first attempts passed in 2024 (858 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 48.95% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 858 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 128.0 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Ford Freda with other cars

Suzuki Baleno is highest at 128.4; Daewoo Matiz is lowest at 127.8 — the gap is 0.6 points.

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

Same brand

All Ford MOT statisticsFord Transit Connect MOT statsFord Transit MOT stats

Similar risk

Ford Transit Connect (index 127.9)Daewoo Matiz (index 127.8)Suzuki Baleno (index 128.4)

Same size class

how Mercedes-Benz EQV compareshow MCC Smart compareshow Dodge Caliber compares

By area

Ford Freda MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

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