Pass rate
83.0%
Around average — 1.0 pts behind the 84.0% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 165 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £31–£87
2016 BMW M235I MOT pass rate
- 2016
- typical 53,317 mi
Check your postcode
Most common fault
Tyres
40.0% of faults · 19.8% nationally
mostly tread below the limit, cuts and sidewall bulges.
Part only £55–£85 for Tread depth below 1.6 mm. What fitting it takes →
Which year to buy
- Best 2022 92.3% pass
- Avoid 2016 83.0% pass · this year
Across the 6 years on record, a spread of 9.3 points. See every year →
- First-attempt pass
- 80.6%
- Typical mileage
- 53k mi
The 2016 BMW M235I MOT pass rate is 83.0% of its MOT tests — 1.0 points behind what its age and mileage predict. Tyres is the biggest single reason it fails, at 40.0% of what testers record.
Expert verdict
Tyres: 2.0× the national share
Tyres make up 40.0% of everything recorded on the 2016 BMW M235i, against 19.8% nationally — 20.2 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.
- When it fails, it costs. Only 28% of this model’s typical repairs come in under £30 in parts — the failures here tend to be the kind that need a garage rather than a bulb.
- Based on a small sample. 165 tests back this page. That is enough to publish and to index, not enough to treat the decimal places as precise — read the pattern, not the second digit.
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 M235I? Get an email when these numbers change .
How does the 2016 BMW M235I compare?
Cars of this age and mileage average 84.0%, so this figure is 1.0 points behind what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 80.6%. The median 2016 BMW M235I in this dataset had covered 53,317 mi.
Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 83.5% of the time, April–September 82.6%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm", noted on 3.03% of tests.
- 165 recorded tests behind this page.
- 83.0% overall pass rate, 80.6% on a first attempt.
- Across every year of the BMW M235I, the average is 91.3% — best year 2022 (92.3%), worst 2016 (83.0%).
Figures count every completed test on this vehicle-year in the dataset, including retests. See methodology for the exact definition.
This page's data
- Tests analysed
- 165
- Typical mileage (median)
- 53,317 mi
- Make and model
- BMW M235I
- Updated
- 2026-11-07
Source: DVSA anonymised MOT test data (2023–2025), OGL v3.0.
Top part to budget for
Tyres
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Does mileage affect the M235I MOT pass rate?
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 67% so small gaps stay visible.
Where the BMW M235I is most common
Across all M235I model years on record (2014–2022): 4,121 BMW M235I cars tested in a recordable postcode area, across 6,373 tests. Glasgow (G) has the most, with 157 cars tested there. Cars are counted by the postcode area of the MOT station, so this is where they were tested, not necessarily where their owners live.
| # | Postcode area | Cars | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Glasgow (G) | 157 | 91.6% |
| 2 | Birmingham (B) | 119 | 95.0% |
| 3 | Newcastle upon Tyne (NE) | 109 | 92.9% |
| 4 | Sheffield (S) | 93 | 89.2% |
| 5 | Aberdeen (AB) | 84 | 87.3% |
| 6 | Reading (RG) | 79 | 88.6% |
| 7 | Leeds (LS) | 78 | 90.4% |
| 8 | Peterborough (PE) | 77 | 94.1% |
| 9 | Warrington (WA) | 75 | 90.0% |
| 10 | Derby (DE) | 75 | 96.2% |
| 11 | Manchester (M) | 72 | 93.5% |
| 12 | Hamilton (ML) | 69 | 87.1% |
| 13 | Nottingham (NG) | 66 | 90.7% |
| 14 | Bolton (BL) | 61 | 90.5% |
| 15 | Stockport (SK) | 59 | 90.7% |
| 16 | Brighton (BN) | 58 | 87.2% |
| 17 | Blackburn (BB) | 57 | 93.2% |
| 18 | Guildford (GU) | 56 | 89.9% |
| 19 | Bristol (BS) | 55 | 92.6% |
| 20 | Coventry (CV) | 55 | 89.4% |
The twenty areas with the most BMW M235I cars in the record, sorted by car count — sort the columns for a different question. Cars tested at a station whose postcode area could not be resolved are counted in the model's total but in no area, so the shares add up to slightly under 100% even across every area, and an area's cars are a subset of the model's. Pass rate is blank below 30 tests in an area, where a percentage is noise rather than a finding. How this model's pass rate varies by postcode →
Regional pass rates for the M235I
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 56 | 75.0% |
| East Midlands | 19 | 89.5% |
| East of England | 17 | 88.2% |
| Scotland | 15 | 80.0% |
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.
What fails a 2016 M235I
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
Three checks worth doing on a 2016 M235I
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 3.0% 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 exhaust and emissions 1.8% of tests
“catalyst emissions carbon monoxide content after 2nd fast idle exceeds manufacturer's specified limits”
Listen for a blow at idle and have someone rev it gently. Then look at the tailpipe smoke: blue is oil, white when warm is coolant, black is over-fuelling. Any of those and the emissions test is the least of it.
-
Check the lights 1.8% of tests
“headlamp aim too low”
Switch everything on and walk round the car: both headlamps on dip and main, every indicator, both brake lights, reverse, fog and the two number-plate lamps. A bulb is a few pounds and a five-minute job.
Shares are the proportion of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item, so they overlap: one test can record several.
What it costs to get a 2016 M235I through its MOT
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £31–£87 — and 28% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
- Average repair across the 10 common items
- £31–£87
- Cheapest common item: malfunction indicator lamp inoperative or…
- £3–£12
- Dearest common item: catalyst emissions carbon monoxide content…
- £60–£250
- Common items a careful owner can do at home
- 70%
- Repairs that still cost under £30
- 28%
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 165 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 →
Every year of the M235I, side by side
6 model years on record, from 2014 to 2022. Across them the pass rate runs from 83.0% to 92.3% — a spread of 9.3 points. The bar under each year is the item that failed it most often.
- 2014 85.0% has a cut in excess of the…
- 2015 86.1% catalyst emissions carbon…
- 2016 83.0%tread depth below requirements of…
- 2020 91.0% has a cut in excess of the…
- 2021 92.1% has a bulge, caused by separation…
- 2022 92.3% tread depth below requirements of…
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.
Compare the 2016 BMW M235I with another year
The raw pass rate mostly measures age. The year comparison adds the like-for-like figure, the mileage bands and the repair bill.
Other 2016 cars with a similar record
- Abarth 595 83.0%
- Subaru Forester 83.0%
- Volkswagen Polo 82.9%
- Audi A1 82.9%
- Ford Ecosport 83.1%
- Kia Sorento 83.2%
Closest pass rates among 2016 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.
The full DVSA record for the 2016 BMW M235I 10 failure items · 6 advisories · 10 inspection categories · mileage brackets · all of it in the page, none of it above the fold
Every inspection category
Shares of the 145 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 | 58 | 40.00% | 19.76% | +20.24 |
| Brakes | 17 | 11.70% | 20.89% | −9.19 |
| Non-component advisories | 16 | 11.00% | 4.18% | +6.82 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 14 | 9.70% | 5.52% | +4.18 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 12 | 8.30% | 12.21% | −3.91 |
| Suspension | 10 | 6.90% | 20.98% | −14.08 |
| Visibility | 8 | 5.50% | 4.97% | +0.53 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 4 | 2.80% | 5.57% | −2.77 |
| Road Wheels | 4 | 2.80% | 0.75% | +2.05 |
| Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | 2 | 1.40% | 0.82% | +0.58 |
The exact failure items, in the tester's words
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Major | 3.0% | £45–95 |
| Catalyst emissions carbon monoxide content after 2nd fast idle exceeds manufacturer's specified limits Noise, emissions and leaks | Major | 1.8% | £60–250 |
| Fixing missing Road Wheels | Major | 1.8% | £20–55 |
| Has ply or cords exposed Tyres | Major | 1.8% | £45–95 |
| Headlamp aim too low Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 1.8% | £30–80 |
| Headlamp cleaning device for LED or HID headlamp inoperative Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 1.8% | £5–25 |
| Wipers blade defective Visibility | Minor | 1.8% | £8–22 |
| Has a cut in excess of the requirements deep enough to reach the ply or cords Tyres | Major | 1.2% | £45–95 |
| Malfunction indicator lamp inoperative or indicates a malfunction Noise, emissions and leaks | Major | 1.2% | £3–12 |
| Retracting mechanism defective Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | Major | 1.2% | £40–120 |
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.
What testers noted without failing the car
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 | 17.0% | £45–95 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 5.5% | £45–95 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 4.8% | £18–45 |
| Has a cut in excess of the requirements deep enough to reach the ply or cords Tyres | Advisory | 4.2% | £45–95 |
| Shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak Suspension | Advisory | 3.6% | £30–75 |
| Non-component advisories Nail in tyre Non-component advisories | Advisory | 3.0% | £45–95 |
Pass rate by mileage
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 21 | 85.7% | 23,829 mi |
| 30-60k | 87 | 82.8% | 47,494 mi |
| 60-90k | 45 | 84.4% | 70,979 mi |
| 90-120k | 12 | 75.0% | 97,881 mi |
Source: 165 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.
2016 M235I MOT questions
What is the MOT pass rate for a 2016 BMW M235I?
83.0% of the 165 2016 BMW M235I tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 84.0% for cars first used in 2016. First-attempt pass rate: 80.6%.
What are the most common MOT failures on a 2016 BMW M235I?
The three most recorded items are tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm (3.03%), catalyst emissions carbon monoxide content after 2nd fast idle exceeds manufacturer's specified limits (1.82%), fixing missing (1.82%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Does mileage affect the 2016 BMW M235I MOT pass rate?
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 85.7% of the time, falling to 75.0% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2016 BMW M235I in this dataset had covered 53,317 mi.
Does the season affect the 2016 BMW M235I MOT pass rate?
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 83.5% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 82.6%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.