Pass rate
Around average — 0.4 pts ahead of the 77.2% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 15,816 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £29–£80
Pass rate
Around average — 0.4 pts ahead of the 77.2% that cars this age and mileage manage.
Across 15,816 recorded tests.
Typical repair bill £29–£80
Most common fault
Suspension
30.6% of faults · 21.0% nationally
mostly worn arm bushes, split ball-joint boots and broken coil springs.
Which year to buy
Across the 11 years on record, a spread of 13.2 points. See every year →
The 2012 Volkswagen Scirocco MOT pass rate is 77.6% of its MOT tests — about what its age and mileage predict. Suspension is the biggest single reason it fails, at 30.6% of what testers record.
MOT pass rates are national — type your postcode to see how Volkswagen Scirocco does in your corner of the country.
Expert verdict
Suspension accounts for 30.6% of everything recorded on the 2012 Volkswagen Scirocco, against 21.0% nationally — 9.6 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 Volkswagen Scirocco? Get an email when these numbers change .
Every Volkswagen Scirocco first registered in 2012 is combined here — 2 trim and body variants in total — so the sample is as large as the DVSA data allows.
Cars of this age and mileage average 77.2%, so this figure is 0.4 points ahead of what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 71.8%. The median 2012 Volkswagen Scirocco in this dataset had covered 103,319 mi.
70% of the tests on this vehicle ran on Diesel, which passed 76.6% of the time. Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 77.7% of the time, April–September 77.5%.
The single most recorded failure item is "Registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources", noted on 5.81% 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.
Number Plate Lamp
Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.
Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 67% so small gaps stay visible.
Pass rate by fuel type. Diesel is the most common here (70% of tests).
| Region | Tests | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| South East | 2,409 | 80.2% |
| South West | 1,942 | 72.8% |
| West Midlands | 1,781 | 79.5% |
| Yorkshire | 1,766 | 78.7% |
| East of England | 1,765 | 78.4% |
| North West | 1,759 | 77.7% |
| East Midlands | 1,536 | 77.4% |
| Scotland | 923 | 73.8% |
| Wales | 874 | 76.0% |
| North East | 767 | 76.9% |
| London | 294 | 83.7% |
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.
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 lights 5.8% 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 coil springs 4.2% 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 3.5% 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.
Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £29–£80 — and 43% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.
Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 15,816 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 →
11 model years on record, from 2008 to 2018. Across them the pass rate runs from 74.3% to 87.5% — a spread of 13.2 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 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.
Shares of the 30,428 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 | 9,395 | 30.60% | 20.98% | +9.62 |
| Tyres | 6,277 | 20.40% | 19.76% | +0.64 |
| Brakes | 5,867 | 19.10% | 20.89% | −1.79 |
| Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | 3,952 | 12.90% | 12.21% | +0.69 |
| Visibility | 1,283 | 4.20% | 4.97% | −0.77 |
| Noise, emissions and leaks | 1,175 | 3.80% | 5.52% | −1.72 |
| Body, chassis, structure | 833 | 2.70% | 5.57% | −2.87 |
| Non-component advisories | 717 | 2.30% | 4.18% | −1.88 |
| Road Wheels | 528 | 1.70% | 0.75% | +0.95 |
| Identification of the vehicle | 401 | 1.30% | 1.76% | −0.46 |
| 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 | 5.8% | £5–20 |
| Coil spring fractured or broken Suspension | Major | 4.2% | £25–65 |
| Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility | Minor | 3.5% | £80–200 |
| Position lamp not working Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Major | 2.3% | £5–25 |
| Linkage ball joint dust cover ball joint dust cover no longer prevents the ingress of dirt Suspension | Major | 2.1% | £18–45 |
| Headlamp lens slightly defective Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment | Minor | 1.9% | £5–25 |
| Joints constant velocity boot severely deteriorated Body, chassis, structure | Minor | 1.9% | £80–250 |
| Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres | Major | 1.7% | £45–95 |
| Rbt (sp) efficiency below requirements Brakes | Major | 1.5% | £45–110 |
| Malfunction indicator lamp inoperative or indicates a malfunction Noise, emissions and leaks | Major | 1.3% | £3–12 |
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 | 19.2% | £45–95 |
| Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes | Advisory | 13.1% | £45–110 |
| Pins and bushes pin or bush excessively worn Suspension | Advisory | 11.2% | £40–150 |
| Coil spring corroded so that its cross sectional area is reduced and seriously weakened Suspension | Advisory | 9.3% | £25–65 |
| Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres | Advisory | 7.8% | £45–95 |
| Brake pads less than 1.5 mm thick Brakes | Advisory | 6.8% | £18–45 |
| Mileage | Tests | Pass rate | Median odometer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-30k | 104 | 93.3% | 21,943 mi |
| 30-60k | 1,074 | 85.6% | 49,293 mi |
| 60-90k | 4,119 | 78.9% | 77,301 mi |
| 90-120k | 5,709 | 77.1% | 104,543 mi |
| 120k+ | 4,808 | 75.0% | 143,573 mi |
Source: 15,816 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.
77.6% of the 15,816 2012 Volkswagen Scirocco tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 77.2% for cars first used in 2012. First-attempt pass rate: 71.8%.
The three most recorded items are registration plate lamp(s) inoperative in the case of multiple lamps or light sources (5.81%), coil spring fractured or broken (4.17%), windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view (3.48%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.
Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 93.3% of the time, falling to 75.0% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2012 Volkswagen Scirocco in this dataset had covered 103,319 mi.
Diesel: 76.6% pass rate across 11,031 tests. Petrol: 79.8% pass rate across 4,785 tests. Shares are of the tests on this vehicle that recorded each fuel type.
Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 77.7% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 77.5%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.