Land Rover Defender — MOT statistics 2024

The Land Rover Defender failed 27.19% of 222,177 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 84.4 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 16% less often than expected for its age.

Age-adjusted peer: Audi A4 (index 84.6) — the two published results are 0.2 index points apart.

Land Rover Defender common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Steering stands out at 31.8 per 100 tests, against 4.6 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

family vs national — top component groups, per 100 tests. Legend: This family · National avg.

Named defects ranked by how much more often they appear than the national average — not by raw rate.

Land Rover Defender MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Suspension is highest at 74.6 per 100 tests; Seatbelts & SRS are lowest at 20.2 per 100 tests — the gap is 54.4 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.

How does the Land Rover Defender perform as it gets older?

At age 16 stands out at 29.1%, against 41.5% for all cars of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–46%.

Takeaway: a 10-year-old Rover Defender has roughly a 21% chance of failing its MOT.

Land Rover Defender petrol vs diesel: which ages best

Diesel is highest at 27.7%; Petrol is lowest at 17.7% — the gap is 10.0 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart sample sizes: n=211k · n=10k.

How dangerous are Land Rover Defender MOT failures?

Major defects stand out at 140.6 per 100 tests, against 63.3 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 36.1 · Major 140.6 · Dangerous 13.8.

Per 100 tests on this family. National average: Minor 24.4 · Major 63.3 · Dangerous 12.9 per 100.

Does the month of a Land Rover Defender MOT matter?

Jan is highest at 29.5%; Sep is lowest at 25.5% — the gap is 4.1 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 23%–31%.

bars: Land Rover Defender · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 4.1 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 19.5% of these cars were first registered in March with another17% in September — 37% 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. Peaks here mark when cars are tested, not when they are worse.

Land Rover Defender average mileage by age

At age 8, the middle half of Rover Defenders runs from 14,294 miles to 46,920 miles, against 29,621 miles as the median.

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

Chart axes: car age, years · odometer scale 0–181k mi.

Does high mileage mean more Land Rover Defender MOT failures?

Same age band (6–14 years), split by odometer — this separates wear from age: 10.2% of the lowest-mileage cars failed versus 36.3% of the highest.

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

A typical 8-year-old Rover Defender has ~29,621 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Land Rover Defender fails its MOT most

Exeter area is highest at 45.8%; Chelmsford area is lowest at 12.5% — the gap is 33.3 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Toughest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Exeter (EX)	45.79%	+18.6 pp
Torquay (TQ)	44.88%	+17.7 pp
Salisbury (SP)	40.75%	+13.6 pp
Bath (BA)	40.7%	+13.5 pp
Taunton (TA)	40.24%	+13.1 pp

Easiest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Chelmsford (CM)	12.47%	-14.7 pp
Sheffield (S)	16.81%	-10.4 pp
Blackburn (BB)	16.93%	-10.3 pp
Birmingham (B)	17.29%	-9.9 pp
Nottingham (NG)	17.48%	-9.7 pp

Why do areas differ?

For each external factor we correlate the area fail rate with the factor across postcode areas that have ≥800 tests of this family, then compare the bottom vs top fifth (quintile) of the factor. Correlation, not causation — factors travel together (the north is colder and often poorer; urban areas are denser and less salted). Road surface condition is joined now, for the 91 English areas the DfT publishes, and it explains nothing: the correlation with suspension failures is −0.01 and with body and structure failures 0.07. Potholes wreck wheels and tyres between tests, but by the time a car reaches the bay the road it drives on leaves no measurable trace.

In areas with the highest urban share this model fails 11.4 pp less often than in the lowest fifth (r=-0.52, n=88 areas with ≥800 tests).

In areas with the highest mot centre density this model fails 7.3 pp more often than in the lowest fifth (r=0.42, n=88 areas with ≥800 tests).

In areas with the highest terrain gradient this model fails 9.0 pp more often than in the lowest fifth (r=0.37, n=53 areas with ≥800 tests).

Values shown in the quintile chart

Factor	Low Q	High Q	Gap	Correlation
Urban share	32.8%	21.4%	-11.4 pp	r=-0.52
MOT centre density	22.9%	30.3%	+7.4 pp	r=0.42
Terrain gradient	22.4%	31.4%	+9.0 pp	r=0.37

Factors that only mean something combined

Some conditions are useless on their own and informative multiplied together. Frost days alone say little — Britain barely freezes. Salt tonnage alone says little — it tracks frost. Distance to the sea alone says little. Multiply the first two and divide by the third and you get an index of how hard an area attacks a car's underside, and it lines up with the corrosion defects we actually record. We built five such combinations and tested each against our own data. Three survived; two did not, and the failures are listed here on purpose — a proxy that was never checked is decoration. One survivor only survived on the second attempt: built from a crude stand-in for street parking it failed outright, and rebuilt from the census — terraced streets carrying more cars than they have driveways — it works, and carries information the salt index does not.

Composite area indicators, each tested against a defect rate we measure

Composite	Built from	Tested against	r	Verdict
Underbody corrosion	frost days × salt load ÷ (distance to coast + 1)	share of tests with a corrosion defect	+0.42	holds (116 areas)
Tyre wear	rain days × annual miles ÷ age at first tyre advisory	share of tests failing on tyres	+0.45	holds (116 areas)
Overnight corrosion	terraced housing × cars per household × frost days	share with a corrosion defect	+0.41	holds (102 areas) — and adds signal beyond the first index
Deferred maintenance	deprivation × advisory-to-failure conversion ÷ labour rate	cars repeating the same advisory	−0.26	fails (118 areas)
Powertrain stress	engine capacity ÷ kerb weight	suspension, brake and emissions failures	−0.16	fails (22 models)

The deprivation result is the one worth dwelling on. The intuition that poorer areas defer repairs is strong enough that most people treat it as established. We tested it twice — once on raw failure rates (r = 0.04) and again, more fairly, on whether an advisory turns into a failure — and it did not hold any of the three times we tried it — on raw failure rates, on advisory-to-failure conversion, and again with deprivation measured properly inside each nation rather than England alone. We are closing it. What does predict local failure rates is the density of test centres, which is a statement about testing, not about cars.

All external-factor correlations (machine-readable)

Factor	r	n areas	Low-Q fail %	High-Q fail %	Gap pp	Low-Q factor	High-Q factor
Urban share (0–1)	-0.522	88	32.8	21.4	-11.4	0.3	0.9
MOT centre density (per 10k vehicles)	0.417	88	22.9	30.3	+7.3	5.6	9
Terrain gradient (% grade)	0.374	53	22.4	31.4	+9.0	0.5	4.4
Distance to coast (km)	-0.338	88	28.8	21.4	-7.5	6.3	82.6
Income deprivation (score)	-0.323	73	25.4	19.9	-5.5	0.1	0.2
Frost days (days/year)	0.029	88	27.8	28.1	+0.3	11.8	38.6
Road-salt proxy (g/m²-yr)	0.010	88	29.1	28.4	-0.8	228.9	690

Deprivation uses England IMD 2019 income score only (Scotland SIMD is a different scale). Salt proxy is a simplified NWSRG-style dry-salt sum from air Tmin; coastalness is distance from the area centroid to the nearest coastline.

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: 16%–40% failing.

Land Rover Defender survival: which cars are still on the road

By age 19 stands out at 50%, against 100% 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 19, only about 50% as many cars of this family present for MOT as at ages 4–6 (reference n≈11,890); survivors still fail at 33.1% vs 6.7% at age 4. Older cars that still appear are a selected subset — weaker ones have already left.

How many miles does a Land Rover Defender last?

100,000+ miles is highest at 46.9%; 200,000+ miles is lowest at 6.7% — the gap is 40.2 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Of 221,270 tests of this family with a usable odometer in 2024, 46.9% had reached 100k miles, 21.8% had reached 150k miles, 6.7% 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 Land Rover Defender likely to last?

Bought at age 8 is highest at 24.7 years; Bought at age 15 is lowest at 4.9 years — the gap is 19.8 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 (~53,524 miles median) has about 6.3 expected years of further MOT-present life on the 2024 survival curve. Derived from how many cars of each age still appear for test, not from a longitudinal panel.

Land Rover Defender faults that come together

Body & structure + Seatbelts & SRS stand out at 11.07×, against 1× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Body, chassis, structure» and «Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems» appear together 11.07× more often than chance (550 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. Thresholds: lift ≥ 1.3, co-occurrences ≥ 300.

Is low mileage better for a Land Rover Defender?

Cars driven under 5,000 miles a year stands out at 18.5%, 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 18.5% vs 30.6% for 8–12k miles/year — 12.1 pp lower (n_low=20,110, n_normal=7,515). 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: 18.6% low-use vs 30.6% normal (-12.1 pp).

Which Land Rover Defender engine is best?

diesel over 2.0 is highest at 100.4; petrol over 2.0 is lowest at 88.7 — the gap is 11.7 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 100.4 against this model's own age norm while the petrol over 2.0 runs at 88.7 — a spread of 11.7 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 5,000 tests are not shown.

Best year for a Land Rover Defender, and the years to avoid

Build year 2000 is highest at 108.7; Build year 2020 is lowest at 76.3 — the gap is 32.4 points.

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

build year vs the same model at the same age · 100 = as expected

The best build year here is 2020 and the weakest is 2000. Comparing build years sounds simple and is not: within a single year of testing, a car's build year and its age are the same number, so a naive comparison of years is a comparison of ages wearing a disguise. Each year below is measured against the same model at the same age in other cohorts, across six years of testing — 12 of 20 years come out distinguishable from their own model's age norm.

Two limits worth knowing before you act on this. Age, test year and build year are locked together by arithmetic, so the test-year effect is taken from the observed national failure level of each year rather than estimated — it is an adjustment, not a solution.

Land Rover Defender MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £154.62 to £293.78, 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 £155 to £294, 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.

Land Rover Defender running costs for a fleet

Vehicles failing at age 10 stand out at 21%, against 5% at age 5 in the same 100-vehicle fleet.

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 age 8 and 9 the failure rate of this model jumps by 4.22 percentage points — the steepest single step in its life, and the 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.

Land Rover Defender rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility stands out at 2.29×, against 1× for the national age-standardised rate.

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

This Land Rover Defender fails on corrosion far more often than average 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 Land Rover Defender advisory become a failure?

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment are highest at 25.5%; Non-component advisories are lowest at 0% — the gap is 25.5 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 26 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12.1 months and roughly 2,592 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 Land Rover Defender?

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment after a failure at age 20+ are highest at 27.2%; Steering after a passed at age 6-8 is lowest at 3.1% — the gap is 24.1 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.

Land Rover Defender ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 68.8%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 7.6% — the gap is 61.2 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 147,896 failures followed through to their re-test, 23.63% were repaired and passed the same day and 68.76% within ten days; the median gap is 2 days. 521,931 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 0.841 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 2,435 miles a year across 121,984 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. 38.36% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 38.17% 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: 2.787% of 122,831 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 35,597 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.

Land Rover Defender MOT: quick answers

Land Rover Defender MOT Risk Index stands out at 84.4, 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 Land Rover Defender first-time MOT pass rate?

72.81% of first attempts passed in 2024 (222,177 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 27.19% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 222,177 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 84.4 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Land Rover Defender with other cars

Honda Jazz is highest at 85; Land Rover Defender is lowest at 84.4 — the gap is 0.6 points.

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

Same brand

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Similar risk

Audi A4 (index 84.6)Honda E (index 84.6)Honda Jazz (index 85)

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