Pass rate
70.2%
Below average — 2.8 pts behind the 73.0% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 114 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £15–£45
2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse MOT pass rate
- 2007
- 2 trims combined
- typical 79,423 mi
Most common fault
Suspension
21.8% of faults · 21.0% nationally
mostly worn arm bushes, split ball-joint boots and broken coil springs.
Part only £35–£75 for Suspension pin or bush excessively worn. What fitting it takes →
Which year to buy
- Best 2013 84.7% pass
- Avoid 2007 70.2% pass · this year
Across the 9 years on record, a spread of 14.5 points. See every year →
- First-attempt pass
- 61.6%
- Typical mileage
- 79k mi
The 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse MOT pass rate is 70.2% of its MOT tests — 2.8 points behind what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 21.8% of what testers record.
Check your postcode
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how Smart Fortwo Pulse does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Lamps & electrics: 1.6× the national share
Lamps & electrics make up 19.6% of everything recorded on the 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse, against 12.2% nationally — 7.4 points above. Suspension is still the single largest share at 21.8%, but at 21.0% 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.
- Failures here tend to be cheap ones. 57% 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.
- Based on a small sample. 114 tests back this page. That is enough to publish and to index, not enough to treat the decimal places as precise — read the pattern, not the second digit.
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 Smart Fortwo Pulse? Get an email when these numbers change .
Every Smart Fortwo Pulse first registered in 2007 is combined here — 2 trim and body variants in total — so the sample is as large as the DVSA data allows.
How does the 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse compare?
Cars of this age and mileage average 73.0%, so this figure is 2.8 points behind what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 61.6%. The median 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse in this dataset had covered 79,423 mi.
The single most recorded failure item is "Stop lamp not working", noted on 7.02% of tests.
- 114 recorded tests behind this page.
- 70.2% overall pass rate, 61.6% on a first attempt.
- Across every year of the Smart Fortwo Pulse, the average is 78.5% — best year 2013 (84.7%), worst 2007 (70.2%).
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
- 114
- Typical mileage (median)
- 79,423 mi
- Make and model
- Smart Fortwo Pulse
- Updated
- 2026-11-05
Source: DVSA anonymised MOT test data (2023–2025), OGL v3.0.
Top part to budget for
Stop Light Bulb
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Does mileage affect the Fortwo Pulse MOT pass rate?
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 59% so small gaps stay visible.
Regional pass rates for the Fortwo Pulse
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 39 | 66.7% |
| East of England | 24 | 66.7% |
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 2007 Fortwo Pulse
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 2007 Fortwo Pulse
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 7.0% of tests
“stop 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 coil springs 4.4% 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 wipers and washers 4.4% of tests
“wipers blade defective”
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.
What it costs to get a 2007 Fortwo Pulse through its MOT
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £15–£45 — and 57% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
- Average repair across the 10 common items
- £15–£45
- Cheapest common item: stop lamp not working
- £3–£12
- Dearest common item: pins
- £40–£150
- Common items a careful owner can do at home
- 80%
- Repairs that still cost under £30
- 57%
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 114 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 Fortwo Pulse, side by side
9 model years on record, from 2005 to 2013. Across them the pass rate runs from 70.2% to 84.7% — a spread of 14.5 points. The bar under each year is the item that failed it most often.
- 2005 73.1% catalyst emissions lambda reading…
- 2006 72.8% washers provides insufficient…
- 2007 70.2%stop lamp not working
- 2008 81.3% windscreen damaged but not…
- 2009 84.7% position lamp not working
- 2010 78.7% coil spring fractured or broken
- 2011 73.0% service brake performance…
- 2012 79.5% coil spring fractured or broken
- 2013 84.7% coil spring fractured or broken
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 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse 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 2007 cars with a similar record
- Citroen C2 70.1%
- Peugeot 407 70.1%
- Volkswagen Polo 70.4%
- Kia Rio 70.0%
- LDV Maxus 70.4%
- Citroen C3 70.5%
Closest pass rates among 2007 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 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse 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 314 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 | 69 | 21.80% | 20.98% | +0.82 |
| Brakes | 67 | 21.20% | 20.89% | +0.31 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 62 | 19.60% | 12.21% | +7.39 |
| Tyres | 28 | 8.90% | 19.76% | −10.86 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 18 | 5.70% | 5.52% | +0.18 |
| Visibility | 16 | 5.10% | 4.97% | +0.13 |
| Non-component advisories | 16 | 5.10% | 4.18% | +0.92 |
| Steering | 16 | 5.10% | 2.57% | +2.53 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 15 | 4.70% | 5.57% | −0.87 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 7 | 2.20% | 1.76% | +0.44 |
The exact failure items, in the tester's words
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stop lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 7.0% | £3–12 |
| Coil spring fractured or broken Suspension | Major | 4.4% | £25–65 |
| Headlamp not working on dipped beam Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 4.4% | £5–25 |
| Wipers blade defective Visibility | Minor | 4.4% | £8–22 |
| Headlamp aim projected beam image is obviously incorrect Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 3.5% | £30–80 |
| Horn not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 3.5% | £8–25 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Major | 3.5% | £40–150 |
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 3.5% | £5–20 |
| Track rod end ball joint dust cover damaged or deteriorated, but preventing the ingress of dirt Steering | Minor | 3.5% | £18–45 |
| Ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt Suspension | Major | 2.6% | £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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 13.2% | £45–95 |
| Rigid brake pipes excessively corroded Brakes | Advisory | 13.2% | £80–180 |
| Non-component advisories Play in steering rack inner joint(s) Non-component advisories | Advisory | 12.3% | £120–300 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 10.5% | £45–110 |
| Engine oil leaks leaking excessively from engine Noise, emissions and leaks | Advisory | 8.8% | £200–700 |
| Coil spring corroded so that its cross sectional area is reduced and seriously weakened Suspension | Advisory | 7.9% | £25–65 |
Pass rate by mileage
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30-60k | 34 | 70.6% | 50,071 mi |
| 60-90k | 44 | 70.5% | 78,864 mi |
| 90-120k | 31 | 67.7% | 106,081 mi |
| 120k+ | 4 | 75.0% | 149,715 mi |
Source: 114 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.
2007 Fortwo Pulse MOT questions
What is the MOT pass rate for a 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse?
70.2% of the 114 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 73.0% for cars first used in 2007. First-attempt pass rate: 61.6%.
What are the most common MOT failures on a 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse?
The three most recorded items are stop lamp not working (7.02%), coil spring fractured or broken (4.39%), headlamp not working on dipped beam (4.39%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Does mileage affect the 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse MOT pass rate?
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 70.6% of the time, falling to 75.0% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2007 Smart Fortwo Pulse in this dataset had covered 79,423 mi.