Pass rate
81.6%
Around average — 9.1 pts behind the 90.7% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 4,654 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £23–£60
2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan MOT pass rate
- 2020
- 3 trims combined
- typical 57,515 mi
Most common fault
Lamps & electrics
27.2% of faults · 12.2% nationally
Part only £6–£18 for Registration plate lamp inoperative (multiple lamps). What fitting it takes →
7.4 pts down across model years — 13.2% in 2013, 5.8% in 2021.
Which year to buy
- Best 2021 82.9% pass
- Avoid 2013 71.6% pass
Across the 9 years on record, a spread of 11.3 points. See every year →
- First-attempt pass
- 78.0%
- Typical mileage
- 58k mi
The 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan MOT pass rate is 81.6% of its MOT tests — 9.1 points behind what its age and mileage predict. Lamps & electrics is the biggest single reason it fails, at 27.2% of what testers record.
Check your postcode
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how Mercedes-Benz Citan does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Lamps & electrics: 2.2× the national share
Lamps & electrics make up 27.2% of everything recorded on the 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan, against 12.2% nationally — 15.0 points above. 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.
- Falls short of its own age and mileage. Like-for-like, cars this age and mileage expect about 90.7%; this one manages 81.6% — 9.1 points below. Age is a fair excuse; this is not age.
- Failures here tend to be cheap ones. 68% of the repairs this model fails on cost under £30 in parts. The pass rate matters less than what a bad afternoon at the test centre actually costs you.
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 Mercedes-Benz Citan? Get an email when these numbers change .
Every Mercedes-Benz Citan first registered in 2020 is combined here — 3 trim and body variants in total — so the sample is as large as the DVSA data allows.
How does the 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan compare?
Cars of this age and mileage average 90.7%, so this figure is 9.1 points behind what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 78.0%. The median 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan in this dataset had covered 57,515 mi.
Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 82.7% of the time, April–September 80.7%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources", noted on 7.35% of tests.
- 4,654 recorded tests behind this page.
- 81.6% overall pass rate, 78.0% on a first attempt.
- Across every year of the Mercedes-Benz Citan, the average is 77.2% — best year 2021 (82.9%), worst 2013 (71.6%).
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
- 4,654
- Typical mileage (median)
- 57,515 mi
- Make and model
- Mercedes-Benz Citan
- Updated
- 2026-11-05
Source: DVSA anonymised MOT test data (2023–2025), OGL v3.0.
Top part to budget for
Number Plate Lamp
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Does mileage affect the Citan MOT pass rate?
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 71% so small gaps stay visible.
Regional pass rates for the Citan
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 850 | 82.6% |
| Yorkshire | 565 | 82.8% |
| North West | 559 | 81.0% |
| Scotland | 526 | 84.8% |
| East of England | 434 | 79.7% |
| West Midlands | 419 | 78.3% |
| South West | 394 | 79.4% |
| Wales | 299 | 82.6% |
| East Midlands | 256 | 81.3% |
| London | 197 | 81.2% |
| North East | 153 | 82.4% |
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 2020 Citan
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 2020 Citan
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 7.3% 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 7.2% 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 brakes 2.5% of tests
“brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick”
Look through the spokes of each wheel at the pad — less than 3mm of friction material, or a lip on the disc edge, is the usual failure. Check the handbrake holds on a slope with a few clicks, not at the top of its travel.
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 2020 Citan through its MOT
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £23–£60 — and 68% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
- Average repair across the 10 common items
- £23–£60
- 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
- 90%
- Repairs that still cost under £30
- 68%
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 4,654 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 Citan, side by side
9 model years on record, from 2013 to 2021. Across them the pass rate runs from 71.6% to 82.9% — a spread of 11.3 points. The bar under each year is the item that failed it most often.
- 2013 71.6% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2014 72.5% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2015 75.4% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2016 76.0% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2017 78.3% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2018 79.1% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2019 82.1% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2020 81.6%registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2021 82.9% windscreen damaged 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 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan 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 2020 cars with a similar record
- Toyota Estima 81.6%
- Vauxhall Combo 83.1%
- Tesla Model 3 Performance 83.2%
- Tesla Model X 84.6%
- Vauxhall Corsa E 85.4%
- Isuzu D-Max 85.4%
Closest pass rates among 2020 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 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan 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 6,188 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 1,692 | 27.20% | 12.21% | +14.99 |
| Brakes | 1,497 | 24.00% | 20.89% | +3.11 |
| Tyres | 1,407 | 22.60% | 19.76% | +2.84 |
| Visibility | 770 | 12.40% | 4.97% | +7.43 |
| Non-component advisories | 214 | 3.40% | 4.18% | −0.78 |
| Road Wheels | 197 | 3.20% | 0.75% | +2.45 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 177 | 2.80% | 5.52% | −2.72 |
| Suspension | 127 | 2.00% | 20.98% | −18.98 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 60 | 1.00% | 5.57% | −4.57 |
| Steering | 47 | 0.80% | 2.57% | −1.77 |
The exact failure items, in the tester's words
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 7.3% | £5–20 |
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 7.2% | £80–200 |
| Stop lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 4.3% | £3–12 |
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of a single lamp or all lamps Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 2.9% | £5–20 |
| Stop lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Rectified | 2.9% | £3–12 |
| Malfunction indicator lamp inoperative or indicates a malfunction Noise, emissions and leaks | Major | 2.6% | £3–12 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Major | 2.5% | £18–45 |
| Wipers does not clear the windscreen effectively Visibility | Major | 2.3% | £8–22 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 2.2% | £5–25 |
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Major | 2.0% | £45–95 |
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 | 18.8% | £45–95 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 12.5% | £18–45 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 6.7% | £45–110 |
| Badly distorted Road Wheels | Advisory | 4.0% | £20–55 |
| Stop lamp with a multiple light source more than 1/2 not functioning Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Advisory | 3.8% | £3–12 |
| Brake discs significantly and obviously worn Brakes | Advisory | 3.4% | £45–110 |
Pass rate by mileage
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 687 | 88.2% | 21,088 mi |
| 30-60k | 1,788 | 81.5% | 45,245 mi |
| 60-90k | 1,324 | 79.8% | 73,474 mi |
| 90-120k | 591 | 79.5% | 102,110 mi |
| 120k+ | 262 | 79.4% | 158,843 mi |
Source: 4,654 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.
2020 Citan MOT questions
What is the MOT pass rate for a 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan?
81.6% of the 4,654 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 90.7% for cars first used in 2020. First-attempt pass rate: 78.0%.
What are the most common MOT failures on a 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan?
The three most recorded items are registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources (7.35%), windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view (7.24%), stop lamp not working (4.25%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Does mileage affect the 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan MOT pass rate?
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 88.2% of the time, falling to 79.4% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan in this dataset had covered 57,515 mi.
Does the season affect the 2020 Mercedes-Benz Citan MOT pass rate?
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 82.7% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 80.7%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.