Pass rate
78.3%
Around average — 1.1 pts ahead of the 77.2% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 954 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £20–£68
2012 Subaru Legacy MOT pass rate
- 2012
- typical 93,650 mi
Check your postcode
Most common fault
Suspension
25.4% 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 2018 86.5% pass
- Avoid 2000 71.4% pass
Across the 22 years on record, a spread of 15.1 points. See every year →
- First-attempt pass
- 73.4%
- Typical mileage
- 94k mi
The 2012 Subaru Legacy MOT pass rate is 78.3% of its MOT tests — 1.1 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 25.4% of what testers record.
Expert verdict
Fewer problems with tyres
Tyres are 14.6% of this car’s recorded faults, against 19.8% nationally — the mirror image of the usual story on a car of this age.
- Failures here tend to be cheap ones. 67% 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 Subaru Legacy? Get an email when these numbers change .
How does the 2012 Subaru Legacy compare?
Cars of this age and mileage average 77.2%, so this figure is 1.1 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 73.4%. The median 2012 Subaru Legacy in this dataset had covered 93,650 mi.
The most common fuel recorded here is Petrol — 69% of tests, with a 78.8% pass rate. Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 76.3% of the time, April–September 80.3%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Position lamp not working", noted on 4.61% of tests.
- 954 recorded tests behind this page.
- 78.3% overall pass rate, 73.4% on a first attempt.
- Across every year of the Subaru Legacy, the average is 75.6% — best year 2018 (86.5%), worst 2000 (71.4%).
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
- 954
- Typical mileage (median)
- 93,650 mi
- Make and model
- Subaru Legacy
- Updated
- 2026-11-07
Source: DVSA anonymised MOT test data (2023–2025), OGL v3.0.
Top part to budget for
Headlight Bulb
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Does mileage affect the Legacy MOT pass rate?
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 63% so small gaps stay visible.
Fuel type and reliability
Pass rate by fuel type. Petrol is the most common here (69% of tests).
Where the Subaru Legacy is most common
Across all Legacy model years on record (2000–2021): 7,878 Subaru Legacy cars tested in a recordable postcode area, across 18,453 tests. Birmingham (B) has the most, with 206 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 | Birmingham (B) | 206 | 80.2% |
| 2 | Ashford (TN) | 187 | 78.8% |
| 3 | Sheffield (S) | 184 | 79.0% |
| 4 | Guildford (GU) | 181 | 75.7% |
| 5 | Reading (RG) | 173 | 76.9% |
| 6 | Gloucester (GL) | 153 | 71.4% |
| 7 | Newcastle upon Tyne (NE) | 148 | 73.4% |
| 8 | Coventry (CV) | 148 | 82.3% |
| 9 | Oxford (OX) | 132 | 75.0% |
| 10 | Crawley (RH) | 129 | 75.5% |
| 11 | Edinburgh (EH) | 125 | 73.1% |
| 12 | Brighton (BN) | 123 | 70.3% |
| 13 | Bristol (BS) | 123 | 70.0% |
| 14 | Southampton (SO) | 113 | 73.5% |
| 15 | Peterborough (PE) | 113 | 80.8% |
| 16 | Portsmouth (PO) | 111 | 73.5% |
| 17 | Glasgow (G) | 111 | 76.9% |
| 18 | Ipswich (IP) | 104 | 72.5% |
| 19 | Bradford (BD) | 104 | 75.6% |
| 20 | Exeter (EX) | 103 | 72.1% |
The twenty areas with the most Subaru Legacy 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 Legacy
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 181 | 77.9% |
| Scotland | 150 | 72.0% |
| West Midlands | 104 | 77.9% |
| East of England | 100 | 82.0% |
| South West | 97 | 68.0% |
| North West | 87 | 80.5% |
| Yorkshire | 84 | 81.0% |
| East Midlands | 50 | 88.0% |
| Wales | 39 | 89.7% |
| North East | 31 | 80.6% |
| London | 31 | 87.1% |
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 2012 Legacy
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 2012 Legacy
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 4.6% 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 suspension joints 2.9% of tests
“pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn”
With the car parked on level ground, rock the top of each front wheel in and out while someone watches the suspension arm. Clunks, or rubber boots split and greasy, are what testers record here.
-
Check the windscreen 2.4% 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.
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 2012 Legacy through its MOT
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £20–£68 — and 67% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
- Average repair across the 10 common items
- £20–£68
- Cheapest common item: malfunction indicator lamp inoperative or…
- £3–£12
- Dearest common item: catalyst emissions lambda reading after 2nd…
- £60–£250
- Common items a careful owner can do at home
- 70%
- Repairs that still cost under £30
- 67%
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 954 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 Legacy, side by side
22 model years on record, from 2000 to 2021. Across them the pass rate runs from 71.4% to 86.5% — a spread of 15.1 points. The bar under each year is the item that failed it most often.
- 2000 71.4% component mounting prescribed…
- 2001 74.0% headlamp lens slightly defective
- 2002 75.0% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2003 73.0% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2004 73.5% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2005 74.8% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2006 73.8% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2007 75.9% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2008 73.8% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2009 75.6% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2010 75.7% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2011 78.0% position lamp not working
- 2012 78.3%position lamp not working
- 2013 77.5% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2014 81.5% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2015 82.5% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2016 81.2% position lamp not working
- 2017 80.3% registration plate lamp(s)…
- 2018 86.5% joints constant velocity boot…
- 2019 79.8% headlamp lens slightly defective
- 2020 81.3% joints constant velocity boot…
- 2021 84.8% joints constant velocity boot…
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 2012 Subaru Legacy 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 2012 cars with a similar record
Closest pass rates among 2012 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 2012 Subaru Legacy 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 1,916 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 | 493 | 25.40% | 20.98% | +4.42 |
| Brakes | 377 | 19.40% | 20.89% | −1.49 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 316 | 16.30% | 12.21% | +4.09 |
| Tyres | 284 | 14.60% | 19.76% | −5.16 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 119 | 6.10% | 5.52% | +0.58 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 113 | 5.80% | 5.57% | +0.23 |
| Visibility | 81 | 4.20% | 4.97% | −0.77 |
| Non-component advisories | 76 | 3.90% | 4.18% | −0.28 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 36 | 1.90% | 1.76% | +0.14 |
| Steering | 21 | 1.10% | 2.57% | −1.47 |
The exact failure items, in the tester's words
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 4.6% | £5–25 |
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 4.0% | £5–20 |
| Headlamp lens slightly defective Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 3.4% | £5–25 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Major | 2.9% | £40–150 |
| Malfunction indicator lamp inoperative or indicates a malfunction Noise, emissions and leaks | Major | 2.7% | £3–12 |
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 2.4% | £80–200 |
| Electronic stability control warning lamp indicates a fault Brakes | Major | 2.2% | £3–15 |
| Ball joint excessively worn Suspension | Major | 2.0% | £18–45 |
| Catalyst emissions Lambda reading after 2nd fast idle outside specified limits Noise, emissions and leaks | Major | 2.0% | £60–250 |
| Position lamp with a multiple light source up to 1/2 not functioning Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 2.0% | £5–25 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 20.8% | £40–150 |
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Advisory | 16.9% | £45–95 |
| Rigid brake pipes excessively corroded Brakes | Advisory | 9.0% | £80–180 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 8.7% | £18–45 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 7.9% | £45–110 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 4.7% | £45–95 |
Pass rate by mileage
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30-60k | 132 | 86.4% | 47,680 mi |
| 60-90k | 305 | 79.0% | 76,077 mi |
| 90-120k | 282 | 79.1% | 103,207 mi |
| 120k+ | 234 | 71.8% | 143,111 mi |
Source: 954 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.
2012 Legacy MOT questions
What is the MOT pass rate for a 2012 Subaru Legacy?
78.3% of the 954 2012 Subaru Legacy tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 77.2% for cars first used in 2012. First-attempt pass rate: 73.4%.
What are the most common MOT failures on a 2012 Subaru Legacy?
The three most recorded items are position lamp not working (4.61%), registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources (3.98%), headlamp lens slightly defective (3.35%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Does mileage affect the 2012 Subaru Legacy MOT pass rate?
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 86.4% of the time, falling to 71.8% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2012 Subaru Legacy in this dataset had covered 93,650 mi.
Which fuel type is most reliable for a 2012 Subaru Legacy?
Petrol: 78.8% pass rate across 660 tests. Diesel: 77.2% pass rate across 294 tests. Shares are of the tests on this vehicle that recorded each fuel type.
Does the season affect the 2012 Subaru Legacy MOT pass rate?
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 76.3% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 80.3%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.