MOT pass rate · 2025 data
Smart Forfour MOT pass rate
The Smart Forfour passed 78.04% of its 22,240 initial MOT tests in 2025 — above the 77.3% average across all cars tested that year. That is 0.7 percentage points better than average.
How the Smart Forfour 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 Smart Forfour grouped by the vehicle's age at the time of the test.
| Age at test | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| 3–5 years | 8 | 100% |
| 6–10 years | 21,155 | 78.68% |
| 11 years and over | 1,076 | 65.33% |
The Smart Forfour drops 34.7 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 Smart Forfour fails its MOT
Across every Smart Forfour that failed its 2025 MOT, the most common area of failure was tyres, accounting for 21.5% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Tyres | 21.5% | 2,262 |
| Suspension | 20.76% | 2,185 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 15.36% | 1,616 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 14.11% | 1,485 |
| Brakes | 10.42% | 1,096 |
| Visibility | 8.87% | 933 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 34.07% | 399 |
| Suspension | 14.6% | 171 |
| Brakes | 14.6% | 171 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 9.48% | 111 |
| Tyres | 6.66% | 78 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 6.32% | 74 |
How the Smart Forfour compares
Ranked on pass rate, the Smart Forfour sits 355th of 651 models in this data , and 1st of the 5 Smart models covered . Smart as a whole averaged 77.32%, so this model runs 0.7 points ahead of its own brand average.
What this means when buying a used Smart Forfour
A pass rate is a population average, not a verdict on the specific car in front of you. The average Smart Forfour came to its 2025 test at 48,183 miles and 8.9 years old. Most examples tested were petrol.
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 Smart Forfour
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 Smart models
- Smart Fortwo 77.99% pass rate · 46,964 tests
- Smart City 66.96% pass rate · 4,189 tests
- Smart Roadster 76.34% pass rate · 1,581 tests
- Smart Unclassified 75.59% pass rate · 1,565 tests
Models with a similar pass rate
- Volkswagen Golf 79.21% pass rate
- BMW 3 Series 77.74% pass rate
- Hyundai I10 79.04% pass rate
- Audi A4 77.09% pass rate
- Mercedes-Benz A-Class 77.86% pass rate
- Kia Picanto 76.85% 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.