Pass rate
Below average — 0.8 pts behind the 72.5% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 899 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £46–£125
Pass rate
Below average — 0.8 pts behind the 72.5% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 899 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £46–£125
Most common fault
Suspension
30.1% of faults · 21.0% nationally
mostly worn arm bushes, split ball-joint boots and broken coil springs.
Which year to buy
Across the 6 years on record, a spread of 7.7 points. See every year →
The 2006 Daihatsu Charade MOT pass rate is 71.7% of its MOT tests — about what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 30.1% of what testers record.
Expert verdict
Suspension accounts for 30.1% of everything recorded on the 2006 Daihatsu Charade, against 21.0% nationally — 9.1 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 Daihatsu Charade? Get an email when these numbers change .
Cars of this age and mileage average 72.5%, so this figure is 0.8 points behind what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 65.1%. The median 2006 Daihatsu Charade in this dataset had covered 63,637 mi.
Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 72.0% of the time, April–September 71.4%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Ball joint excessively worn", noted on 7.34% 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.
Ball Joint
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 55% so small gaps stay visible.
Across all Charade model years on record (2000–2007): 1,681 Daihatsu Charade cars tested in a recordable postcode area, across 4,337 tests. Brighton (BN) has the most, with 76 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 | Brighton (BN) | 76 | 67.9% |
| 2 | Birmingham (B) | 61 | 72.9% |
| 3 | Portsmouth (PO) | 52 | 66.5% |
| 4 | Bristol (BS) | 52 | 69.2% |
| 5 | Taunton (TA) | 40 | 70.8% |
| 6 | Norwich (NR) | 38 | 67.2% |
| 7 | Peterborough (PE) | 38 | 71.3% |
| 8 | Sheffield (S) | 36 | 72.0% |
| 9 | Exeter (EX) | 33 | 66.3% |
| 10 | Plymouth (PL) | 29 | 64.5% |
| 11 | Reading (RG) | 29 | 72.9% |
| 12 | Canterbury (CT) | 27 | 66.3% |
| 13 | Gloucester (GL) | 26 | 72.1% |
| 14 | Ashford (TN) | 26 | 74.6% |
| 15 | Nottingham (NG) | 25 | 60.0% |
| 16 | London (SE) | 25 | 72.1% |
| 17 | Ipswich (IP) | 24 | 63.5% |
| 18 | Guildford (GU) | 24 | 67.3% |
| 19 | Derby (DE) | 23 | 75.4% |
| 20 | Leicester (LE) | 23 | 70.0% |
The twenty areas with the most Daihatsu Charade 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 →
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 269 | 71.7% |
| South West | 176 | 67.6% |
| West Midlands | 81 | 77.8% |
| North West | 79 | 73.4% |
| East of England | 75 | 70.7% |
| Yorkshire | 66 | 68.2% |
| London | 45 | 82.2% |
| East Midlands | 37 | 67.6% |
| Wales | 31 | 71.0% |
| Scotland | 30 | 76.7% |
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 suspension joints 7.3% of tests
“ball joint 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 corrosion 4.8% of tests
“component mounting prescribed areas prescribed area excessively corroded significantly reducing structural strength”
Look under the sills, around the jacking points and where the suspension mounts meet the body. Flaking, holed or crumbly metal fails; a brown stain on sound metal does not.
Check the lights 4.8% of tests
“headlamp lens slightly defective”
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.
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £46–£125 — and 27% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 899 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 →
6 model years on record, from 2000 to 2007. Across them the pass rate runs from 64.9% to 72.6% — a spread of 7.7 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 2006 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 2,427 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 | 738 | 30.10% | 20.98% | +9.12 |
| Brakes | 409 | 16.70% | 20.89% | −4.19 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 303 | 12.30% | 5.57% | +6.73 |
| Tyres | 286 | 11.70% | 19.76% | −8.06 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 278 | 11.30% | 12.21% | −0.91 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 135 | 5.50% | 5.52% | −0.02 |
| Visibility | 110 | 4.50% | 4.97% | −0.47 |
| Non-component advisories | 89 | 3.60% | 4.18% | −0.58 |
| Steering | 44 | 1.80% | 2.57% | −0.77 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 35 | 1.40% | 1.76% | −0.36 |
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ball joint excessively worn Suspension | Major | 7.3% | £18–45 |
| Joints constant velocity boot severely deteriorated Body, chassis, structure | Minor | 6.6% | £80–250 |
| Ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated Suspension | Minor | 5.7% | £18–45 |
| Component mounting prescribed areas prescribed area excessively corroded significantly reducing structural strength Suspension | Major | 4.8% | £180–450 |
| Headlamp lens slightly defective Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 4.8% | £5–25 |
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 4.1% | £5–20 |
| Wipers does not clear the windscreen effectively Visibility | Major | 3.6% | £8–22 |
| Exhaust system has a major leak of exhaust gases Body, chassis, structure | Major | 3.1% | £45–120 |
| Rigid brake pipes excessively corroded Brakes | Major | 3.1% | £80–180 |
| Ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt Suspension | Major | 2.9% | £18–45 |
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 | 13.9% | £45–95 |
| Rigid brake pipes excessively corroded Brakes | Advisory | 12.7% | £80–180 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 12.5% | £40–150 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 11.5% | £45–95 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 7.9% | £45–110 |
| Exhaust system has a major leak of exhaust gases Body, chassis, structure | Advisory | 7.6% | £45–120 |
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 82 | 89.0% | 20,355 mi |
| 30-60k | 321 | 73.2% | 46,232 mi |
| 60-90k | 327 | 68.5% | 74,353 mi |
| 90-120k | 123 | 68.3% | 101,203 mi |
| 120k+ | 46 | 63.0% | 141,648 mi |
Source: 899 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.
71.7% of the 899 2006 Daihatsu Charade tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 72.5% for cars first used in 2006. First-attempt pass rate: 65.1%.
The three most recorded items are ball joint excessively worn (7.34%), joints constant velocity boot severely deteriorated (6.56%), ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated (5.67%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 89.0% of the time, falling to 63.0% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2006 Daihatsu Charade in this dataset had covered 63,637 mi.
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 72.0% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 71.4%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.