Pass rate
Around average — 5.0 pts ahead of the 74.7% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 79 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £37–£106
Only 79 tests of this exact model and year are in the DVSA data, below the 100 we ask for before a page goes in the index. The figures are still shown, because they are the only ones there are.
Pass rate
Around average — 5.0 pts ahead of the 74.7% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 79 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £37–£106
Most common fault
Suspension
40.6% of faults · 21.0% nationally
mostly worn arm bushes, split ball-joint boots and broken coil springs.
Which year to buy
Across the 9 years on record, a spread of 13.4 points. See every year →
The 2010 Hyundai Sonata MOT pass rate is 79.7% of its MOT tests — 5.0 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 40.6% of what testers record.
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how Hyundai Sonata does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Suspension accounts for 40.6% of everything recorded on the 2010 Hyundai Sonata, against 21.0% nationally — 19.6 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 Hyundai Sonata? Get an email when these numbers change .
Cars of this age and mileage average 74.7%, so this figure is 5.0 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 76.5%. The median 2010 Hyundai Sonata in this dataset had covered 98,832 mi.
The single most recorded failure item is "Door condition cannot be opened from outside the vehicle", noted on 7.59% 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.
Body Panel Repair
Typically a garage job — get quotes before committing.
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 67% so small gaps stay visible.
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 lights 6.3% of tests
“registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources”
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.
Check the windscreen 6.3% 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 wipers and washers 3.8% of tests
“wipers does not clear the windscreen effectively”
Run the wipers with the screen wet: they should clear it in one sweep without smearing or juddering. Top the washer bottle up and check both jets hit the 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 £37–£106 — and 44% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 79 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 →
9 model years on record, from 2002 to 2010. Across them the pass rate runs from 69.3% to 82.7% — a spread of 13.4 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 2010 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 201 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 | 82 | 40.60% | 20.98% | +19.62 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 28 | 13.90% | 12.21% | +1.69 |
| Brakes | 22 | 10.90% | 20.89% | −9.99 |
| Tyres | 22 | 10.90% | 19.76% | −8.86 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 15 | 7.40% | 5.52% | +1.88 |
| Visibility | 11 | 5.40% | 4.97% | +0.43 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 9 | 4.50% | 5.57% | −1.07 |
| Non-component advisories | 7 | 3.50% | 4.18% | −0.68 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 3 | 1.50% | 1.76% | −0.26 |
| Steering | 2 | 1.00% | 2.57% | −1.57 |
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Door condition cannot be opened from outside the vehicle Body, chassis, structure | Major | 7.6% | £80–250 |
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 6.3% | £5–20 |
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 6.3% | £80–200 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 5.1% | £5–25 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 3.8% | £5–25 |
| Wipers does not clear the windscreen effectively Visibility | Major | 3.8% | £8–22 |
| Ball joint excessively worn Suspension | Major | 2.5% | £18–45 |
| Battery(ies) insecure but not likely to fall from carrier Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 2.5% | £60–140 |
| Full power hydraulic systems malfunctioning or defective Brakes | Minor | 2.5% | £45–110 |
| Headlamp aim too low Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 2.5% | £30–80 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 22.8% | £40–150 |
| Coil spring corroded so that its cross sectional area is reduced and seriously weakened Suspension | Advisory | 21.5% | £25–65 |
| Sub-frame corroded and seriously weakened Suspension | Advisory | 15.2% | £180–450 |
| Suspension arm corroded and seriously weakened Suspension | Advisory | 12.7% | £35–85 |
| Ball joint excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 11.4% | £18–45 |
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Advisory | 11.4% | £45–95 |
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30-60k | 4 | 100.0% | 45,349 mi |
| 60-90k | 24 | 75.0% | 80,551 mi |
| 90-120k | 30 | 80.0% | 101,033 mi |
| 120k+ | 21 | 81.0% | 137,936 mi |
Source: 79 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.
79.7% of the 79 2010 Hyundai Sonata tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 74.7% for cars first used in 2010. First-attempt pass rate: 76.5%.
The three most recorded items are door condition cannot be opened from outside the vehicle (7.59%), registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources (6.33%), windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view (6.33%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 100.0% of the time, falling to 81.0% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2010 Hyundai Sonata in this dataset had covered 98,832 mi.