Pass rate
Around average — 2.8 pts ahead of the 78.6% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 38,934 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £30–£78
Pass rate
Around average — 2.8 pts ahead of the 78.6% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 38,934 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £30–£78
Most common fault
Suspension
27.0% of faults · 21.0% nationally
mostly worn arm bushes, split ball-joint boots and broken coil springs.
Part only £40–£65 for Shock absorber leaking. What fitting it takes →
1.7 pts up across model years — 2.5% in 2001, 4.2% in 2023.
Which year to buy
Across the 26 years on record, a spread of 30.3 points. See every year →
The 2013 Skoda Octavia MOT pass rate is 81.4% of its MOT tests — 2.8 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 27.0% of what testers record.
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how Skoda Octavia does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Suspension accounts for 27.0% of everything recorded on the 2013 Skoda Octavia, against 21.0% nationally — 6.0 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 Skoda Octavia? Get an email when these numbers change .
Every Skoda Octavia first registered in 2013 is combined here — 4 trim and body variants in total — so the sample is as large as the DVSA data allows.
Cars of this age and mileage average 78.6%, so this figure is 2.8 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 77.4%. The median 2013 Skoda Octavia in this dataset had covered 108,479 mi.
81% of the tests on this vehicle ran on Diesel, which passed 81.1% of the time. Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 81.1% of the time, April–September 81.6%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Coil spring fractured or broken", noted on 3.36% 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.
Coil Spring
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 71% so small gaps stay visible.
Pass rate by fuel type. Diesel is the most common here (81% of tests).
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 7,224 | 82.4% |
| North West | 4,844 | 82.2% |
| South West | 4,834 | 78.2% |
| Yorkshire | 4,415 | 81.7% |
| West Midlands | 3,755 | 83.2% |
| East of England | 3,652 | 83.7% |
| Scotland | 3,039 | 76.2% |
| East Midlands | 2,805 | 81.4% |
| Wales | 1,882 | 80.2% |
| North East | 1,810 | 82.2% |
| London | 674 | 84.6% |
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 coil springs 3.4% of tests
“coil spring fractured or broken”
Look up inside each wheel arch with a torch, all the way round the spring. A snapped spring usually breaks at the very bottom coil, where a quick glance will not reach.
Check the windscreen 3.3% 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 lights 2.7% 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.
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 £30–£78 — and 29% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 38,934 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 →
26 model years on record, from 2000 to 2025. Across them the pass rate runs from 69.7% to 100.0% — a spread of 30.3 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 2013 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 64,703 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 | 17,649 | 27.00% | 20.98% | +6.02 |
| Brakes | 14,741 | 22.50% | 20.89% | +1.61 |
| Tyres | 13,477 | 20.60% | 19.76% | +0.84 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 6,729 | 10.30% | 12.21% | −1.91 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 3,534 | 5.40% | 5.52% | −0.12 |
| Visibility | 2,740 | 4.20% | 4.97% | −0.77 |
| Non-component advisories | 2,457 | 3.80% | 4.18% | −0.38 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 1,363 | 2.10% | 5.57% | −3.47 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 1,297 | 2.00% | 1.76% | +0.24 |
| Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | 716 | 1.10% | 0.82% | +0.28 |
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coil spring fractured or broken Suspension | Major | 3.4% | £25–65 |
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 3.3% | £80–200 |
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 2.7% | £5–20 |
| Linkage ball joint dust cover ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt Suspension | Major | 1.5% | £18–45 |
| Rear reflectors defective or damaged by up to 50% of the reflecting surface Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 1.5% | £5–25 |
| Service brake performance excessively binding Brakes | Major | 1.4% | £60–150 |
| Malfunction indicator lamp inoperative or indicates a malfunction Noise, emissions and leaks | Major | 1.4% | £3–12 |
| Shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak Suspension | Major | 1.4% | £30–75 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Major | 1.4% | £18–45 |
| Linkage ball joint dust cover ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated Suspension | Minor | 1.1% | £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 | 17.5% | £45–95 |
| Shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak Suspension | Advisory | 16.4% | £30–75 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 11.8% | £45–110 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 8.6% | £18–45 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 7.8% | £45–95 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 6.0% | £40–150 |
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 283 | 88.3% | 23,986 mi |
| 30-60k | 3,105 | 87.5% | 48,673 mi |
| 60-90k | 8,894 | 83.8% | 76,566 mi |
| 90-120k | 10,983 | 80.6% | 104,420 mi |
| 120k+ | 15,514 | 79.2% | 166,450 mi |
Source: 38,934 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.
81.4% of the 38,934 2013 Skoda Octavia tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 78.6% for cars first used in 2013. First-attempt pass rate: 77.4%.
The three most recorded items are coil spring fractured or broken (3.36%), windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view (3.26%), registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources (2.66%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 88.3% of the time, falling to 79.2% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2013 Skoda Octavia in this dataset had covered 108,479 mi.
Diesel: 81.1% pass rate across 31,457 tests. Petrol: 82.2% pass rate across 7,477 tests. Shares are of the tests on this vehicle that recorded each fuel type.
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 81.1% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 81.6%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.