Pass rate
90.0%
Above average — 6.0 pts ahead of the 84.0% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 5,648 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £32–£83
2016 Land Rover Defender MOT pass rate
- 2016
- typical 31,163 mi
Check your postcode
Most common fault
Brakes
20.7% of faults · 20.9% nationally
mostly worn pads and discs, corroded pipes and a handbrake that will not hold.
Part only £25–£55 for Rigid brake pipes excessively corroded. What fitting it takes →
5.2 pts down across model years — 8.3% in 2000, 3.1% in 2016.
Which year to buy
- Best 2023 100.0% pass
- Avoid 2000 74.7% pass
Across the 22 years on record, a spread of 25.3 points. See every year →
- First-attempt pass
- 89.0%
- Typical mileage
- 31k mi
The 2016 Land Rover Defender MOT pass rate is 90.0% of its MOT tests — 6.0 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. Brakes is the biggest single reason it fails, at 20.7% of what testers record.
Expert verdict
Lamps & electrics: 1.6× the national share
Lamps & electrics make up 19.6% of everything recorded on the 2016 Land Rover Defender, against 12.2% nationally — 7.4 points above. Brakes are still the single largest share at 20.7%, but at 20.9% nationally that one is ordinary. Walk round the car with the lights on before the test: bulbs, indicators and number-plate lamps are the cheapest failures to prevent and among the most common.
- Beats its own age and mileage. Once you allow for how old and how far these cars have been driven, the expected pass rate is 84.0% and this one manages 90.0% — 6.0 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict.
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 Land Rover Defender? Get an email when these numbers change .
How does the 2016 Land Rover Defender compare?
Cars of this age and mileage average 84.0%, so this figure is 6.0 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 89.0%. The median 2016 Land Rover Defender in this dataset had covered 31,163 mi.
The most common fuel recorded here is Diesel — 98% of tests, with a 90.0% pass rate. Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 89.6% of the time, April–September 90.8%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view", noted on 2.85% of tests.
- 5,648 recorded tests behind this page.
- 90.0% overall pass rate, 89.0% on a first attempt.
- Across every year of the Land Rover Defender, the average is 80.3% — best year 2023 (100.0%), worst 2000 (74.7%).
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
- 5,648
- Typical mileage (median)
- 31,163 mi
- Make and model
- Land Rover Defender
- Updated
- 2026-11-07
Source: DVSA anonymised MOT test data (2023–2025), OGL v3.0.
Top part to budget for
Windscreen
Typically a garage job — get quotes before committing.
Does mileage affect the Defender MOT pass rate?
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 66% so small gaps stay visible.
Fuel type and reliability
Pass rate by fuel type. Diesel is the most common here (98% of tests).
Where the Land Rover Defender is most common
Across all Defender model years on record (2000–2023): 101,959 Land Rover Defender cars tested in a recordable postcode area, across 256,065 tests. Ashford (TN) has the most, with 2,784 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 | Ashford (TN) | 2,784 | 82.8% |
| 2 | Exeter (EX) | 2,387 | 71.6% |
| 3 | Guildford (GU) | 2,167 | 78.3% |
| 4 | Peterborough (PE) | 2,063 | 84.7% |
| 5 | Gloucester (GL) | 2,057 | 80.4% |
| 6 | Plymouth (PL) | 1,902 | 75.7% |
| 7 | York (YO) | 1,879 | 82.2% |
| 8 | Reading (RG) | 1,858 | 85.2% |
| 9 | Shrewsbury (SY) | 1,842 | 81.2% |
| 10 | Oxford (OX) | 1,830 | 83.2% |
| 11 | Wrexham (LL) | 1,794 | 79.4% |
| 12 | Yeovil (BA) | 1,665 | 72.6% |
| 13 | Swansea (SA) | 1,626 | 76.4% |
| 14 | Crawley (RH) | 1,620 | 81.8% |
| 15 | Chelmsford (CM) | 1,616 | 88.1% |
| 16 | Sheffield (S) | 1,549 | 85.1% |
| 17 | Leicester (LE) | 1,521 | 84.2% |
| 18 | Norwich (NR) | 1,519 | 79.8% |
| 19 | Southampton (SO) | 1,480 | 80.1% |
| 20 | Derby (DE) | 1,470 | 83.8% |
The twenty areas with the most Land Rover Defender 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 Defender
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 1,144 | 90.7% |
| South West | 874 | 87.1% |
| North West | 614 | 90.7% |
| East of England | 587 | 92.7% |
| Yorkshire | 543 | 91.5% |
| Scotland | 513 | 85.2% |
| West Midlands | 487 | 91.4% |
| East Midlands | 341 | 91.2% |
| Wales | 232 | 88.8% |
| North East | 190 | 89.5% |
| London | 122 | 96.7% |
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.
What fails a 2016 Defender
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 Defender
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 2.9% 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 lights 1.7% of tests
“position lamp not working”
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 shock absorbers 1.4% of tests
“shock absorbers has an excessively worn bush”
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.
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 Defender through its MOT
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £32–£83 — and 46% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
- Average repair across the 10 common items
- £32–£83
- Cheapest common item: stop lamp not working
- £3–£12
- Dearest common item: windscreen damaged
- £80–£200
- Common items a careful owner can do at home
- 60%
- Repairs that still cost under £30
- 46%
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 5,648 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 Defender, side by side
22 model years on record, from 2000 to 2023. Across them the pass rate runs from 74.7% to 100.0% — a spread of 25.3 points. The bar under each year is the item that failed it most often.
- 2000 74.7% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2001 75.0% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2002 75.8% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2003 75.7% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2004 76.2% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2005 76.9% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2006 76.8% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2007 77.3% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2008 78.6% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2009 77.9% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2010 78.9% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2011 79.6% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2012 81.4% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2013 82.8% track rod end ball joint dust…
- 2014 85.0% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2015 87.2% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2016 90.0%windscreen damaged but not…
- 2019 85.1% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2020 92.4% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2021 93.9% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2022 94.3% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2023 100.0% window excessively tinted but not…
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 Land Rover Defender 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
- Mercedes-Benz Gle 90.0%
- SEAT Ateca 90.0%
- BMW X5 89.9%
- MINI Countryman 89.8%
- BMW 1 Series 90.3%
- Audi Q2 90.3%
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 Land Rover Defender 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 4,395 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brakes | 925 | 20.70% | 20.89% | −0.19 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 878 | 19.60% | 12.21% | +7.39 |
| Suspension | 753 | 16.80% | 20.98% | −4.18 |
| Visibility | 427 | 9.50% | 4.97% | +4.53 |
| Tyres | 400 | 8.90% | 19.76% | −10.86 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 297 | 6.60% | 5.52% | +1.08 |
| Steering | 291 | 6.50% | 2.57% | +3.93 |
| Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | 206 | 4.60% | 0.82% | +3.78 |
| Non-component advisories | 122 | 2.70% | 4.18% | −1.48 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 96 | 2.10% | 5.57% | −3.47 |
The exact failure items, in the tester's words
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 2.9% | £80–200 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 1.7% | £5–25 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 1.6% | £5–25 |
| Shock absorbers has an excessively worn bush Suspension | Major | 1.4% | £30–75 |
| Wipers blade defective Visibility | Minor | 1.3% | £8–22 |
| Headlamp aim too low Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 1.2% | £30–80 |
| Headlamp aim too high Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 1.1% | £30–80 |
| Wipers does not clear the windscreen effectively Visibility | Major | 0.94% | £8–22 |
| Stop lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 0.90% | £3–12 |
| Rigid brake pipes excessively corroded Brakes | Major | 0.85% | £80–180 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shock absorbers has an excessively worn bush Suspension | Advisory | 5.7% | £30–75 |
| Rigid brake pipes excessively corroded Brakes | Advisory | 5.3% | £80–180 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 3.8% | £18–45 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 3.0% | £45–110 |
| Transmission oil leaks leaking excessively from transmission Noise, emissions and leaks | Advisory | 2.7% | £200–700 |
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Advisory | 2.7% | £45–95 |
Pass rate by mileage
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 2,696 | 94.8% | 15,022 mi |
| 30-60k | 1,888 | 86.8% | 43,106 mi |
| 60-90k | 708 | 84.3% | 72,835 mi |
| 90-120k | 222 | 82.0% | 102,765 mi |
| 120k+ | 81 | 74.1% | 140,243 mi |
Source: 5,648 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 Defender MOT questions
What is the MOT pass rate for a 2016 Land Rover Defender?
90.0% of the 5,648 2016 Land Rover Defender tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 84.0% for cars first used in 2016. First-attempt pass rate: 89.0%.
What are the most common MOT failures on a 2016 Land Rover Defender?
The three most recorded items are windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view (2.85%), position lamp not working (1.66%), position lamp not working (1.63%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Does mileage affect the 2016 Land Rover Defender MOT pass rate?
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 94.8% of the time, falling to 74.1% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2016 Land Rover Defender in this dataset had covered 31,163 mi.
Which fuel type is most reliable for a 2016 Land Rover Defender?
Diesel: 90.0% pass rate across 5,519 tests. Petrol: 91.2% pass rate across 125 tests. Shares are of the tests on this vehicle that recorded each fuel type.
Does the season affect the 2016 Land Rover Defender MOT pass rate?
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 89.6% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 90.8%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.