Pass rate
Around average — 4.6 pts ahead of the 80.2% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 105 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £41–£97
Pass rate
Around average — 4.6 pts ahead of the 80.2% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 105 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £41–£97
Most common fault
Suspension
31.1% of faults · 21.0% nationally
mostly worn arm bushes, split ball-joint boots and broken coil springs.
Part only £40–£65 for Shock absorber leaking. What fitting it takes →
Which year to buy
Across the 23 years on record, a spread of 16.6 points. See every year →
The 2014 BMW Alpina MOT pass rate is 84.8% of its MOT tests — 4.6 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 31.1% of what testers record.
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how BMW Alpina does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Suspension accounts for 31.1% of everything recorded on the 2014 BMW Alpina, against 21.0% nationally — 10.1 points above. Ask for the front and rear suspension to be checked on a ramp before you buy — worn bushes and broken springs are cheap to look at and expensive to discover at test time.
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 Alpina? Get an email when these numbers change .
Cars of this age and mileage average 80.2%, so this figure is 4.6 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 83.2%. The median 2014 BMW Alpina in this dataset had covered 89,554 mi.
The most common fuel recorded here is Diesel — 90% of tests, with a 83.2% pass rate.
The single most recorded failure item is "Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm", noted on 5.71% 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.
Tyres
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 69% so small gaps stay visible.
Pass rate by fuel type. Diesel is the most common here (90% of tests).
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| East of England | 26 | 84.6% |
| South East | 24 | 91.7% |
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 tyre tread 5.7% of tests
“tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm”
Check all four tyres cold, including the inner shoulder where wear hides — 1.6mm across the central three-quarters is the legal limit, and most testers fail at 1.6mm without argument.
Check the shock absorbers 4.8% of tests
“shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak”
Press down hard on each corner of the car and let go. It should settle in one bounce; if it keeps rocking, or you can see oil weeping down a shock absorber, that is the fault a tester will find.
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.
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 £41–£97 — 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 105 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 →
23 model years on record, from 2000 to 2022. Across them the pass rate runs from 81.6% to 98.2% — a spread of 16.6 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 119 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suspension | 37 | 31.10% | 20.98% | +10.12 |
| Tyres | 32 | 26.90% | 19.76% | +7.14 |
| Brakes | 18 | 15.10% | 20.89% | −5.79 |
| Non-component advisories | 15 | 12.60% | 4.18% | +8.42 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 7 | 5.90% | 12.21% | −6.31 |
| Visibility | 6 | 5.00% | 4.97% | +0.03 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 2 | 1.70% | 5.52% | −3.82 |
| Steering | 1 | 0.80% | 2.57% | −1.77 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 1 | 0.80% | 1.76% | −0.96 |
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Major | 5.7% | £45–95 |
| Shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak Suspension | Major | 4.8% | £30–75 |
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 3.8% | £80–200 |
| Coil spring fractured or broken Suspension | Major | 2.9% | £25–65 |
| Has a bulge, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Major | 1.9% | £45–95 |
| Has a cut in excess of the requirements deep enough to reach the ply or cords Tyres | Major | 1.9% | £45–95 |
| Headlamp aim too low Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 1.9% | £30–80 |
| Has ply or cords exposed Tyres | Major | 0.95% | £45–95 |
| Headlamp cleaning device for LED or HID headlamp inoperative Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 0.95% | £5–25 |
| Rear fog lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 0.95% | £3–15 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coil spring corroded so that its cross sectional area is reduced and seriously weakened Suspension | Advisory | 13.3% | £25–65 |
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Advisory | 12.4% | £45–95 |
| Non-component advisories Play in steering rack inner joint(s) Non-component advisories | Advisory | 10.5% | £120–300 |
| Shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak Suspension | Advisory | 9.5% | £30–75 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 7.6% | £18–45 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 5.7% | £45–110 |
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 10 | 90.0% | 17,564 mi |
| 30-60k | 9 | 100.0% | 51,505 mi |
| 60-90k | 34 | 88.2% | 72,609 mi |
| 90-120k | 34 | 79.4% | 102,161 mi |
| 120k+ | 18 | 77.8% | 158,011 mi |
Source: 105 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.
84.8% of the 105 2014 BMW Alpina tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 80.2% for cars first used in 2014. First-attempt pass rate: 83.2%.
The three most recorded items are tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm (5.71%), shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak (4.76%), windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view (3.81%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 90.0% of the time, falling to 77.8% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2014 BMW Alpina in this dataset had covered 89,554 mi.
Diesel: 83.2% pass rate across 95 tests. Petrol: 100.0% pass rate across 10 tests. Shares are of the tests on this vehicle that recorded each fuel type.