Toyota Highlander — MOT statistics 2024

The Toyota Highlander failed 10.87% of 745 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 80.7 (100 = expected for its age profile). This car fails its MOT about 19% less often than expected for its age. Small sample — treat with care.

Age-adjusted peer: BMW 3 Series (index 80.7) — the two published results are 0.0 index points apart.

Toyota Highlander common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment stand out at 15.7 per 100 tests, against 6.3 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.

Toyota Highlander MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Tyres are highest at 38.1 per 100 tests; Non-component advisories are lowest at 7.0 per 100 tests — the gap is 31.1 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.

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 1,077 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 9.1 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 Toyota Highlander 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 Toyota Highlander perform as it gets older?

The Highlander at age 3 is well below the reference at 9.7%, 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 0–14%.

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

How dangerous are Toyota Highlander MOT failures?

Major defects are well below the reference at 18.5 per 100 tests, against 52.8 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 12.1 · Major 18.4 · Dangerous 4.5.

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

Does the month of a Toyota Highlander MOT matter?

Nov is highest at 21.7%; Aug is lowest at 9.6% — the gap is 12.1 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 8%–33%.

bars: Toyota Highlander · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 12.1 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 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.

Toyota Highlander average mileage by age

At age 3, the middle half of Highlanders runs from 19,373 miles to 35,401 miles, against 26,958 miles as the median.

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

Does high mileage mean more Toyota Highlander 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, 9.5% of those with under 40,000 miles failed first time versus 10.6% 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 Highlander has ~26,958 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Toyota Highlander fails its MOT most

Too few tests in any single postcode area to name one, so this is the wider picture across 1,111 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.

Toyota Highlander faults that come together

Defects in «Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment» and «Visibility» were seen together in 17 tests (36 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).

Toyota Highlander rust problems: where they corrode

Salt-belt exposure is well below the reference at 39th percentile, against 50th percentile as the middle of published models.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

This Toyota Highlander has too few tests to judge for corrosion 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.

Toyota Highlander safety recalls and how to check yours

DVSA recall campaigns stand out at 10.

bigger number = more recorded casescompare like-for-like scope, not sample size alone

recall campaigns launched per year

DVSA lists 10 safety recall campaigns for the Toyota Highlander, covering roughly 198,603 vehicles in total. A recall is the manufacturer fixing a fault for free, so an open recall on your car costs nothing to clear.

Counter-intuitive, and measured on our own data: across the 25 families published here, more recalls go with a lower MOT Risk Index (r = −0.52). Heavily recalled models are not worse cars in the test bay — an active manufacturer removes the fault before it becomes an MOT failure.

Check whether a specific car has an outstanding recall — free, by registration — at DVSA's recall service. Source: DVSA vehicle safety recalls (check-vehicle-recalls.service.gov.uk), OGL.

Toyota Highlander technical service bulletins: what dealers are told

US market, Toyota HIGHLANDER, model years 2021–2022 only. A count of bulletins, not a UK failure rate.

NHTSA manufacturer communications are 230.

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.

Toyota Highlander owner complaints: what goes wrong

US market, Toyota HIGHLANDER, model years 2021–2022 only. A count of owner complaints, not a UK failure rate; NHTSA has no UK denominator.

Transmission (not MOT-tested) is highest at 273; Engine (not MOT-tested) is lowest at 55 — the gap is 218.

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 763 complaints about the equivalent Toyota Highlander to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, including 32 that mention a crash, 5 a fire and 31 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.

Toyota Highlander MOT: quick answers

Toyota Highlander MOT Risk Index is well below the reference at 80.7, 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 Toyota Highlander first-time MOT pass rate?

89.13% of first attempts passed in 2024 (745 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 10.87% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 745 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 80.7 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Toyota Highlander with other cars

Mercedes-Benz E-Class is highest at 80.7; Toyota Highlander is lowest at 80.7 — the gap is 0.0 points.

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

Same brand

All Toyota MOT statisticsToyota RAV4 MOT statsToyota Prius MOT stats

Similar risk

BMW 3 Series (index 80.7)Jaguar E-Pace (index 80.7)Mercedes-Benz E-Class (index 80.7)

Same size class

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By area

Toyota Highlander MOT failure rate by postcode area

By failure group

Toyota Highlander brakes failuresToyota Highlander lamps, reflectors and electrics failuresToyota Highlander tyres failuresToyota Highlander visibility failures