Vauxhall Vivaro — MOT statistics 2024

The Vauxhall Vivaro failed 41.93% of 275,396 first MOT attempts in 2024 ("first-time", excluding retests). Adjusted for the age of the fleet, its initial-failure ratio is 156.4 (100 = expected for its age profile). This van fails its MOT about 56% more often than expected for its age.

Age-adjusted peer: Citroen Berlingo (index 157.7) — the two published results are 1.3 index points apart.

Vauxhall Vivaro common problems: what actually fails the MOT

Suspension stands out at 42 per 100 tests, against 19.9 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.

Vauxhall Vivaro MOT advisories: what gets flagged

Brakes are highest at 81.3 per 100 tests; Non-component advisories are lowest at 12.9 per 100 tests — the gap is 68.4 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 Vauxhall Vivaro perform as it gets older?

At age 7 stands out at 37.1%, against 18.2% for all cars of the same age.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart axes: car age, years · failure-rate scale 0–59%.

Takeaway: a 10-year-old Vivaro has roughly a 45% chance of failing its MOT; from about age 3 it stays above the national age curve.

Vauxhall Vivaro petrol vs diesel: which ages best

Diesel is highest at 42.0%; Electric is lowest at 17.4% — the gap is 24.6 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart sample sizes: n=274k · n=1,350.

How dangerous are Vauxhall Vivaro MOT failures?

Major defects stand out at 138.9 per 100 tests, against 63.3 per 100 tests nationally.

higher bar = fails more oftenrate per 100 tests

Chart values: Minor 33.6 · Major 138.9 · Dangerous 19.8.

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

Does the month of a Vauxhall Vivaro MOT matter?

Jan is highest at 43.2%; Sep is lowest at 40.4% — the gap is 2.8 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Chart scale: 23%–45%.

bars: Vauxhall Vivaro · dashed: all class-4 cars

Takeaway: the spread between best and worst month is 2.8 percentage points — booking month barely matters for this family. 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.

Vauxhall Vivaro average mileage by age

At age 8, the middle half of Vivaros runs from 64,488 miles to 121,851 miles, against 89,545 miles as the median.

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

Chart axes: car age, years · odometer scale 0–196k mi.

Does high mileage mean more Vauxhall Vivaro MOT failures?

Same age band (6–14 years), split by odometer — this separates wear from age: 21.2% of the lowest-mileage cars failed versus 50.3% of the highest.

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

A typical 8-year-old Vivaro has ~89,545 miles on the clock. Much more — ask why; much less — check for gaps in the MOT history.

Where in Britain the Vauxhall Vivaro fails its MOT most

Exeter area is highest at 55.7%; Dartford area is lowest at 28.9% — the gap is 26.7 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Toughest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Exeter (EX)	55.65%	+13.7 pp
Bath (BA)	55.1%	+13.2 pp
Taunton (TA)	53.09%	+11.2 pp
Hull (HU)	52.41%	+10.5 pp
Portsmouth (PO)	52.15%	+10.2 pp

Easiest areas	% failing	vs model overall
Dartford (DA)	28.94%	-13.0 pp
Southend-on-Sea (SS)	31.64%	-10.3 pp
Glasgow (G)	33.6%	-8.3 pp
Blackburn (BB)	34.93%	-7.0 pp
Hemel Hempstead (HP)	35.36%	-6.6 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 mot centre density this model fails 13.7 pp more often than in the lowest fifth (r=0.63, n=102 areas with ≥800 tests).

In areas with the highest urban share this model fails 11.6 pp less often than in the lowest fifth (r=-0.53, n=102 areas with ≥800 tests).

In the most coastal fifth of areas this model fails 6.5 pp more often than in the most inland fifth (r=-0.31, n=102 areas with ≥800 tests).

Values shown in the quintile chart

Factor	Low Q	High Q	Gap	Correlation
MOT centre density	32.8%	46.5%	+13.7 pp	r=0.63
Urban share	45.1%	33.6%	-11.5 pp	r=-0.53
Distance to coast	45.9%	39.4%	-6.5 pp	r=-0.31

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
MOT centre density (per 10k vehicles)	0.625	102	32.8	46.5	+13.7	5.1	8.5
Urban share (0–1)	-0.530	102	45.1	33.6	-11.6	0.4	1
Distance to coast (km)	-0.313	102	45.9	39.4	-6.5	5.8	80
Terrain gradient (% grade)	0.259	62	40.4	43.8	+3.5	0.5	3.4
Income deprivation (score)	-0.233	87	42.4	38.4	-4.0	0.1	0.2
Frost days (days/year)	0.122	102	41.7	42.6	+0.9	11.8	36.7
Road-salt proxy (g/m²-yr)	0.118	102	39.7	42.9	+3.2	223	644.4

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: 31%–52% failing.

Vauxhall Vivaro survival: which cars are still on the road

By age 19 stands out at 56.7%, 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 57% as many cars of this family present for MOT as at ages 4–6 (reference n≈15,704); survivors still fail at 49.4% vs 24.6% at age 4. Older cars that still appear are a selected subset — weaker ones have already left.

How many miles does a Vauxhall Vivaro last?

100,000+ miles is highest at 55.2%; 200,000+ miles is lowest at 6.9% — the gap is 48.3 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Of 274,218 tests of this family with a usable odometer in 2024, 55.2% had reached 100k miles, 25.1% had reached 150k miles, 6.9% 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 Vauxhall Vivaro likely to last?

Bought at age 5 is highest at 12.3 years; Bought at age 12 is lowest at 6.4 years — the gap is 5.9 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 (~112,984 miles median) has about 7.2 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.

Vauxhall Vivaro faults that come together

Emissions & leaks + Seatbelts & SRS stand out at 5.29×, against 1× if the faults were independent.

above 1.0× = more than expectedbelow 1.0× = less

Defects in «Noise, emissions and leaks» and «Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems» appear together 5.29× more often than chance (611 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 Vauxhall Vivaro?

Cars driven under 5,000 miles a year stands out at 25.6%, against 40.2% 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 25.6% vs 40.2% for 8–12k miles/year — 14.6 pp lower (n_low=6,763, n_normal=51,353). 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: 25.6% low-use vs 40.2% normal (-14.6 pp).

Best year for a Vauxhall Vivaro, and the years to avoid

Build year 2011 is highest at 108; Build year 2016 is lowest at 94.3 — the gap is 13.7 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 2016 and the weakest is 2011. 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 — 15 of 19 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.

Vauxhall Vivaro MOT repair costs

The MOT-failure repair budget per test runs from £185.07 to £351.63, 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 £185 to £352, 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.

Vauxhall Vivaro running costs for a fleet

Vehicles failing at age 10 stand out at 45%, against 27% 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 6 and 7 the failure rate of this model jumps by 5.31 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.

Vauxhall Vivaro rust problems: where they corrode

Age-standardised corrosion susceptibility stands out at 3.9×, against 1× for the national age-standardised rate.

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

This Vauxhall Vivaro 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 Vauxhall Vivaro advisory become a failure?

Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment are highest at 29.1%; Identification of the vehicle is lowest at 5.1% — the gap is 24.0 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 29 in 100 cars, and the median gap is 12.1 months and roughly 7,170 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 Vauxhall Vivaro?

Suspension after a failure at age 15-19 is highest at 33.6%; Suspension after a passed at age <3 is lowest at 4.9% — the gap is 28.8 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.

Vauxhall Vivaro ownership: what six years of MOTs show

The ten-day re-test pass rate is highest at 59.4%; The later re-test pass rate is lowest at 3.7% — the gap is 55.7 percentage points.

higher = larger sharecompare shares in percentage points

Failing is usually a same-week event, not a disaster. Of 355,964 failures followed through to their re-test, 36.86% were repaired and passed the same day and 59.43% within ten days; the median gap is 1 day. 1,206,465 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 0.483 failures per 10,000 miles, on a median of 7,333 miles a year across 211,865 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. 26.59% of these cars strung together three or more tests with nothing recorded at all, while 37.33% 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: 1.395% of 212,362 chains show a reading lower than the previous test, with a median drop of 21,958 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.

Vauxhall Vivaro MOT: quick answers

Vauxhall Vivaro MOT Risk Index stands out at 156.4, 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 Vauxhall Vivaro first-time MOT pass rate?

58.07% of first attempts passed in 2024 (275,396 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 41.93% figure is the first-time initial failure rate, using 275,396 primary tests as the denominator (first-time, excluding retests). The age-adjusted MOT initial-failure ratio 156.4 is shown separately because raw rates compare fleet age as well as cars.

Compare the Vauxhall Vivaro with other cars

Citroen Berlingo is highest at 157.7; Renault Clio is lowest at 141.5 — the gap is 16.2 points.

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

Same brand

All Vauxhall MOT statisticsVauxhall Mokka MOT statsVauxhall Corsa MOT stats

Similar risk

Citroen Berlingo (index 157.7)DS 3 (index 150.2)Renault Clio (index 141.5)

Same size class

how Volkswagen Passat compareshow Citroen Berlingo compareshow Vauxhall Zafira compares