MOT pass rate · 2025 data
Land Rover Defender MOT pass rate
The Land Rover Defender passed 77.05% of its 116,187 initial MOT tests in 2025 — in line with the 77.3% average across all cars tested that year.
How the Land Rover Defender holds up with age
Every car fails the MOT more often as it gets older. What matters when you are buying is how steeply that happens for this particular model. These are the 2025 pass rates for the Land Rover Defender grouped by the vehicle's age at the time of the test.
| Age at test | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| 3–5 years | 17,842 | 92.67% |
| 6–10 years | 8,253 | 85.92% |
| 11 years and over | 89,666 | 73.03% |
The Land Rover Defender drops 19.6 percentage points between its early years and the 11-plus bracket, which is a steep decline. On an older example, the MOT history is worth reading closely before you buy.
Why the Land Rover Defender fails its MOT
Across every Land Rover Defender that failed its 2025 MOT, the most common area of failure was lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment, accounting for 26.58% of all recorded failure items. These are the areas worth having checked before you buy, and worth budgeting for on an older example.
| Failure area | Share of failure items | Recorded items |
|---|---|---|
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 26.58% | 24,799 |
| Suspension | 17.67% | 16,484 |
| Brakes | 15.32% | 14,299 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 12.43% | 11,597 |
| Steering | 10.77% | 10,047 |
| Visibility | 7.4% | 6,909 |
How the Land Rover Defender compares
Ranked on pass rate, the Land Rover Defender sits 380th of 651 models in this data , and 8th of the 9 Land Rover models covered . Land Rover as a whole averaged 80.86%, so this model runs 3.8 points behind its own brand average.
What this means when buying a used Land Rover Defender
A pass rate is a population average, not a verdict on the specific car in front of you. The average Land Rover Defender came to its 2025 test at 98,593 miles and 18.8 years old. Most examples tested were diesel.
The useful check is the individual car's own MOT record: how many times it has failed, what for, and whether advisories keep reappearing. A recurring advisory on corrosion, suspension or brakes tells you far more than a model-wide average, and a mileage that does not move consistently between tests is a warning in itself.
Check a specific Land Rover Defender
Run the registration through a free MOT history check to see that car's test results, advisories and recorded mileages. For the risks an MOT never covers — outstanding finance, insurance write-off records, stolen markers and ownership history — a full car history check brings them together in one £15 report.
Also useful: mileage check · write-off check · free car check
Other Land Rover models
- Land Rover Range 83.61% pass rate · 387,957 tests
- Land Rover Discovery 81.32% pass rate · 251,981 tests
- Land Rover Freelander 70.79% pass rate · 110,102 tests
- Land Rover R Rover 90.05% pass rate · 31,488 tests
- Land Rover Rrover 88.89% pass rate · 3,717 tests
- Land Rover RR 89.89% pass rate · 3,174 tests
Models with a similar pass rate
- BMW 3 Series 77.74% pass rate
- Audi A4 77.09% pass rate
- Mercedes-Benz A-Class 77.86% pass rate
- Kia Picanto 76.85% pass rate
- Volkswagen Passat 75.9% pass rate
- Ford Ranger 77.42% pass rate
Figures aggregated from the DVSA MOT Anonymised data set for 2025, class 4 initial tests only, contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Retests are excluded, so these are first-time pass rates.