Pass rate
Above average — 13.1 pts ahead of the 74.0% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 955 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £11–£33
Pass rate
Above average — 13.1 pts ahead of the 74.0% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 955 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £11–£33
Most common fault
Suspension
27.3% of faults · 21.0% nationally
mostly worn arm bushes, split ball-joint boots and broken coil springs.
Which year to buy
Across the 21 years on record, a spread of 16.5 points. See every year →
The 2009 Toyota Alphard MOT pass rate is 87.1% of its MOT tests — 13.1 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 27.3% of what testers record.
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how Toyota Alphard does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Lamps & electrics make up 22.2% of everything recorded on the 2009 Toyota Alphard, against 12.2% nationally — 10.0 points above. Suspension is still the single largest share at 27.3%, 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.
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 Toyota Alphard? Get an email when these numbers change .
Every Toyota Alphard first registered in 2009 is combined here — 5 trim and body variants in total — so the sample is as large as the DVSA data allows.
Cars of this age and mileage average 74.0%, so this figure is 13.1 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 85.4%. The median 2009 Toyota Alphard in this dataset had covered 69,970 mi.
97% of the tests on this vehicle ran on Hybrid, which passed 87.2% of the time. Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 86.2% of the time, April–September 88.0%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated", noted on 5.13% 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.
Ball Joint
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 70% so small gaps stay visible.
Pass rate by fuel type. Hybrid is the most common here (97% of tests).
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 314 | 84.4% |
| London | 102 | 86.3% |
| South West | 100 | 81.0% |
| North West | 89 | 88.8% |
| West Midlands | 87 | 93.1% |
| Scotland | 66 | 93.9% |
| East of England | 59 | 88.1% |
| Yorkshire | 56 | 98.2% |
| North East | 33 | 87.9% |
| Wales | 25 | 80.0% |
| East Midlands | 24 | 83.3% |
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 suspension joints 5.1% of tests
“ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated”
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 lights 2.0% of tests
“rear fog 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.
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 £11–£33 — and 48% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 955 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 →
21 model years on record, from 2002 to 2022. Across them the pass rate runs from 77.3% to 93.8% — a spread of 16.5 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 2009 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 903 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 | 248 | 27.30% | 20.98% | +6.32 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 202 | 22.20% | 12.21% | +9.99 |
| Tyres | 178 | 19.60% | 19.76% | −0.16 |
| Brakes | 147 | 16.20% | 20.89% | −4.69 |
| Visibility | 40 | 4.40% | 4.97% | −0.57 |
| Non-component advisories | 39 | 4.30% | 4.18% | +0.12 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 15 | 1.70% | 5.57% | −3.87 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 15 | 1.70% | 5.52% | −3.82 |
| Steering | 12 | 1.30% | 2.57% | −1.27 |
| Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems | 7 | 0.80% | 0.82% | −0.02 |
| Recorded item | Severity | Tests | Est. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated Suspension | Minor | 5.1% | £18–45 |
| Ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt Suspension | Major | 2.2% | £18–45 |
| Linkage ball joint dust cover ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt Suspension | Major | 2.0% | £18–45 |
| Rear fog lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 2.0% | £3–15 |
| Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 2.0% | £5–20 |
| Rear fog lamp missing Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 1.8% | £3–15 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 1.6% | £5–25 |
| Linkage ball joint dust cover ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated Suspension | Minor | 1.5% | £18–45 |
| Switch missing Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 1.4% | £5–25 |
| Position lamp with a multiple light source up to 1/2 not functioning Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 1.3% | £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.
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 | 8.3% | £45–95 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 7.5% | £18–45 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 6.9% | £45–95 |
| Swivel pins and bushes swivel pin and/or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 4.7% | £40–150 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 4.1% | £45–110 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 3.8% | £40–150 |
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 23 | 100.0% | 23,945 mi |
| 30-60k | 285 | 84.9% | 48,924 mi |
| 60-90k | 463 | 90.7% | 73,578 mi |
| 90-120k | 133 | 80.5% | 101,256 mi |
| 120k+ | 51 | 78.4% | 137,161 mi |
Source: 955 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.
87.1% of the 955 2009 Toyota Alphard tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 74.0% for cars first used in 2009. First-attempt pass rate: 85.4%.
The three most recorded items are ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated (5.13%), ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt (2.20%), linkage ball joint dust cover ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt (1.99%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 100.0% of the time, falling to 78.4% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2009 Toyota Alphard in this dataset had covered 69,970 mi.
Hybrid: 87.2% pass rate across 930 tests. Petrol: 84.0% pass rate across 25 tests. Shares are of the tests on this vehicle that recorded each fuel type.
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 86.2% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 88.0%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.