Rover 45 — MOT statistics 2024

The Rover 45 failed 44.13% of 2,003 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 106.8 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 7% more often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.

Age-adjusted peer: Alfa Romeo 159 (index 106.8) — the two published results are 0.0 index points apart.

Rover 45 common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Body, chassis, structure stand out at 31.4 per 100 tests, against 15.6 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.

Rover 45 MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Suspension is highest at 61.4 per 100 tests; Identification is lowest at 6.9 per 100 tests — the gap is 54.5 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 raises next year's chance of failing again by 4.0 percentage points. The failure most likely to come back is tyres — 39.0% 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 26,152 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.

Split by how much each car is driven. This is a split by annual mileage, not by body type — the MOT record does not say whether a car is a conversion. Within each band the index compares with vehicles of the same age driven as much.

Mileage matters here: matching on how much these are driven moves the figure by 7.9 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 Rover 45 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 Rover 45 perform as it gets older?

The 45 at age 19 stands out at 48.0%, against 43.5% for all vehicles of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–52%.

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

How dangerous are Rover 45 MOT failures?

Major defects stand out at 111.9 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 27.1 · Major 111.9 · Dangerous 13.4.

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

Does the month of a Rover 45 MOT matter?

Jan is highest at 48.8%; Dec is lowest at 43.1% — the gap is 5.7 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 27%–50%.

bars: Rover 45 · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 5.7 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.

Rover 45 average mileage by age

At age 20+, the middle half of 45s runs from 53,252 miles to 97,532 miles, against 73,943 miles as the median.

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

Does high mileage mean more Rover 45 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+, 31.6% of those with under 40,000 miles failed first time versus 48.7% of those with over 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 20+-year-old 45 has ~73,943 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Rover 45 fails its MOT most

York area is highest at 62.3%; Twickenham area is lowest at 27.3% — the gap is 34.9 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Toughest areas	% failing	vs model overall
York (YO)	62.25%	+16.6 pp
Dorchester (DT)	61.94%	+16.3 pp
Bath (BA)	56.77%	+11.1 pp
Exeter (EX)	55.25%	+9.6 pp
Darlington (DL)	54.86%	+9.2 pp

Easiest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Twickenham (TW)	27.34%	-18.3 pp
Croydon (CR)	29.51%	-16.2 pp
Romford (RM)	29.84%	-15.8 pp
Enfield (EN)	30.91%	-14.8 pp
Slough (SL)	33.55%	-12.1 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: 39%–55% failing.

How many miles does a Rover 45 last?

100,000+ miles is highest at 22.7%; 150,000+ miles is lowest at 3.5% — the gap is 19.3 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Of 26,153 tests of this family with a usable odometer in 2024, 22.7% had reached 100k miles, 3.5% had reached 150k miles. This is a cross-section of cars still presenting for MOT, not a full birth cohort.

Rover 45 faults that come together

Lamps & electrical + Road Wheels stand out at 4.01×, 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 2.74× more often than chance (1,017 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).

Is low mileage better for a Rover 45?

Cars driven under 5,000 miles a year is well below the reference at 39.0%, against 49.4% 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 39.0% vs 49.4% for 8–12k miles/year — 10.4 pp, interval includes no difference (n_low=436, n_normal=81). The gap interval includes no difference, so no higher/lower claim is made. Diesel alone: 54.8% low-use vs 48.6% normal (+6.3 pp).

Best year for a Rover 45, and the years to avoid

Build year 2000 is highest at 102.3; Build year 2004 is lowest at 94.0 — the gap is 8.3 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 2004 and the weakest is 2004. 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 — 1 of 6 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.

Rover 45 MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £135.44 to £257.34, 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 £135 to £257, 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.

Rover 45 rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility stands out at 5.23×, against 1.00× for the national age-standardised rate.

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

This Rover 45 fails on corrosion far more often than average once age is held constant, and its owners live in areas that are gentler than most for the models we publish. Those two point in opposite directions, which is the informative case: it rusts more than average despite living in gentler places, so the cause is the car, not the postcode.

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 Rover 45 advisory become a failure?

Body, chassis, structure are highest at 30.3%; Non-component advisories are lowest at 0.0% — the gap is 30.3 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 30 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12.1 months and roughly 2,562 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 Rover 45?

Body, chassis, structure after a failure at age 12-14 are highest at 25.8%; Suspension after a passed at age 12-14 is lowest at 7.7% — the gap is 18.2 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.

Rover 45 ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 65.9%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 5.7% — the gap is 60.2 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 8,321 failures followed through to their re-test, 28.4% were repaired and passed the same day and 65.88% within ten days; the median gap is 2 days. 24,342 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 1.384 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 2,066 miles a year across 5,871 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. 22.69% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 41.27% 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: 0.731% of 5,886 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 5,991 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.

Rover 45 MOT: quick answers

Rover 45 MOT Risk Index stands out at 106.8, 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 Rover 45 first-time MOT pass rate?

55.87% of first attempts passed in 2024 (2,003 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 44.13% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 2,003 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 106.8 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Rover 45 with other cars

Kia Rio is highest at 106.8; LDV Maxus is lowest at 106.7 — the gap is 0.1 points.

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

Same brand

All Rover MOT statisticsRover 75 MOT statsRover 25 MOT stats

Similar risk

Alfa Romeo 159 (index 106.8)Kia Rio (index 106.8)LDV Maxus (index 106.7)

Same size class

how MG ZR compareshow Peugeot 1007 compareshow Mazda MX-30 compares

By build year

Rover 45 2000Rover 45 2001Rover 45 2002Rover 45 2003Rover 45 2004Rover 45 2005

By area

Rover 45 MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

Rover 45 body, chassis and structure failuresRover 45 brakes failuresRover 45 vehicle identification failuresRover 45 lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresRover 45 noise, emissions and leaks failuresRover 45 road wheels failuresRover 45 seat belts and airbags failuresRover 45 steering failuresRover 45 suspension failuresRover 45 tyres failuresRover 45 visibility failures