Pass rate
Above average — 7.5 pts ahead of the 80.2% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 236 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £45–£120
Pass rate
Above average — 7.5 pts ahead of the 80.2% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 236 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £45–£120
Most common fault
Tyres
27.4% of faults · 19.8% nationally
mostly tread below the limit, cuts and sidewall bulges.
Part only £55–£85 for Tyre has a tear. What fitting it takes →
Which year to buy
Across the 18 years on record, a spread of 14.9 points. See every year →
The 2014 BMW 7 Series MOT pass rate is 87.7% of its MOT tests — 7.5 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. Tyres is the biggest single reason it fails, at 27.4% of what testers record.
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how BMW 7 Series does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Tyres make up 27.4% of everything recorded on the 2014 BMW 7 Series, against 19.8% nationally — 7.6 points above. Check all four tyres yourself, including the inner shoulders, and look at the date stamp — a tyre can pass on tread and still be six years old.
Written from this page's own figures: fault shares against the national composition, the like-for-like pass rate, and the priced repair list. How these are worked out
Watching a BMW 7 Series? Get an email when these numbers change .
Cars of this age and mileage average 80.2%, so this figure is 7.5 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 86.2%. The median 2014 BMW 7 Series in this dataset had covered 111,255 mi.
The most common fuel recorded here is Diesel — 62% of tests, with a 91.1% pass rate. Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 83.6% of the time, April–September 92.1%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view", noted on 3.81% of tests.
Figures count every completed test on this vehicle-year in the dataset, including retests. See methodology for the exact definition.
Source: DVSA anonymised MOT test data (2023–2025), OGL v3.0.
Windscreen
Typically a garage job — get quotes before committing.
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 70% so small gaps stay visible.
Pass rate by fuel type. Diesel is the most common here (62% of tests).
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 54 | 87.0% |
| North West | 30 | 93.3% |
| London | 30 | 90.0% |
| West Midlands | 27 | 96.3% |
| East of England | 22 | 90.9% |
| Scotland | 21 | 66.7% |
| Yorkshire | 17 | 94.1% |
Regions come from the postcode area recorded at the test station. Areas on region borders are assigned to the region with the majority of their population.
Everything a tester recorded on this vehicle, grouped into the inspection sections that produced it. The notch on each bar is the national share, so you can see at a glance whether this car is unusual or just ordinary.
A test can record several items, so these percentages do not add up to 100%. The exact strings, with prices, are in the full DVSA record at the bottom of this page.
Before your test
These are not generic tips — they are the faults recorded most often on this exact model, rewritten as things you can check yourself. All three take about ten minutes and cost nothing.
Check the windscreen 3.8% of tests
“windscreen damaged”
Check the driver’s side of the screen within the swept area for chips and cracks; anything larger than 10mm in the driver’s central view is a fail. Most chips can be resin-repaired for far less than a new screen.
Check the suspension joints 2.1% of tests
“pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn”
With the car parked on level ground, rock the top of each front wheel in and out while someone watches the suspension arm. Clunks, or rubber boots split and greasy, are what testers record here.
Check the coil springs 0.8% of tests
“coil spring fractured or broken”
Look up inside each wheel arch with a torch, all the way round the spring. A snapped spring usually breaks at the very bottom coil, where a quick glance will not reach.
Shares are the proportion of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item, so they overlap: one test can record several.
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £45–£120 — and 7% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 236 MOT tests on this vehicle. They exclude diagnostics, retest fees and garage labour where the part is a DIY fit, and they are not figures from the DVSA dataset. Older and higher-mileage examples cost more than the average. How these estimates are built → · All MOT repair costs → · Cheapest cars to put through a test →
18 model years on record, from 2005 to 2022. Across them the pass rate runs from 80.6% to 95.5% — a spread of 14.9 points. The bar under each year is the item that failed it most often.
Colour is the pass rate on a fixed scale, so a block means the same thing on any model. Each year links to its own page with the full fault breakdown.
The raw pass rate mostly measures age. The year comparison adds the like-for-like figure, the mileage bands and the repair bill.
Closest pass rates among 2014 cars with at least 2,000 tests, so a small sample cannot flatter itself into the list. See the full rankings: best and worst MOT pass rates.
Shares of the 197 individual items recorded on this vehicle, and the same share across all cars nationally. A single test can record several items, so a row is not a percentage of tests.
| Category | Items | This car | Nationally | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tyres | 54 | 27.40% | 19.76% | +7.64 |
| Suspension | 50 | 25.40% | 20.98% | +4.42 |
| Brakes | 44 | 22.30% | 20.89% | +1.41 |
| Visibility | 14 | 7.10% | 4.97% | +2.13 |
| Non-component advisories | 12 | 6.10% | 4.18% | +1.92 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 9 | 4.60% | 5.52% | −0.92 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 6 | 3.00% | 12.21% | −9.21 |
| Steering | 4 | 2.00% | 2.57% | −0.57 |
| Road Wheels | 3 | 1.50% | 0.75% | +0.75 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 1 | 0.50% | 1.76% | −1.26 |
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 3.8% | £80–200 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Major | 2.1% | £40–150 |
| Ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt Suspension | Major | 0.85% | £18–45 |
| Ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated Suspension | Minor | 0.85% | £18–45 |
| Ball joint excessively worn Suspension | Major | 0.85% | £18–45 |
| Coil spring fractured or broken Suspension | Major | 0.85% | £25–65 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Major | 0.85% | £45–95 |
| Headlamp cleaning device for LED or HID headlamp inoperative Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 0.85% | £5–25 |
| Rbt (sp) efficiency below requirements Brakes | Major | 0.85% | £45–110 |
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Major | 0.85% | £45–95 |
Severity is as recorded: Major and Dangerous fail the test outright; Minor and Advisory do not. Costs are estimates from typical UK parts prices — see how they are built.
Advisories are the early warnings — the same parts a year or two before they fail. Reading them is how you tell a car that has been maintained from one that has been patched.
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Advisory | 11.0% | £45–95 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 8.1% | £40–150 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 5.9% | £18–45 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 4.7% | £45–110 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 3.4% | £45–95 |
| Tread depth tread pattern not visible over the whole tread area when minimum depth required is 1.0mm Tyres | Advisory | 3.4% | £45–95 |
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 6 | 83.3% | 17,923 mi |
| 30-60k | 32 | 78.1% | 43,274 mi |
| 60-90k | 46 | 89.1% | 74,863 mi |
| 90-120k | 51 | 90.2% | 106,268 mi |
| 120k+ | 98 | 88.8% | 169,486 mi |
Source: 236 recorded tests on this vehicle-year. Every row above is recomputed from the same DVSA extract as the rest of the page — see the methodology.
87.7% of the 236 2014 BMW 7 Series tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 80.2% for cars first used in 2014. First-attempt pass rate: 86.2%.
The three most recorded items are windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view (3.81%), pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn (2.12%), ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt (0.85%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 83.3% of the time, falling to 88.8% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2014 BMW 7 Series in this dataset had covered 111,255 mi.
Diesel: 91.1% pass rate across 146 tests. Hybrid: 82.2% pass rate across 90 tests. Shares are of the tests on this vehicle that recorded each fuel type.
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 83.6% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 92.1%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.