So the Octavia is supposed to be the best car on a Golf IV platform?

Well, not if you're looking at the latest T

And what if we don't take into account all the Octavia's running around as taxi's which will be well past their best after 3 years?

In Germany?

In Germany?

It tends to be Mercedes taxis in Germany doesn't it. The results are interesting but then it's an MOT test, and surely there's a number of owner related reasons a car could fail rather than a direct hit on manufacturers?

surely there's a number of owner related reasons a car could fail rather than a direct hit on manufacturers?

I'd say this is more than likely...poor maintenance and/or a hard life. The best results are given by relatively expensive cars which are usually privately owned (which would imply that the owner's would have a few bob to keep them serviced and maintained as perfect).

Then you get the company cars, which will be serviced well once they're serviced, but it's pretty common for routine checks never to be done on them, so it might well have a low tyre tread which would fail it.

Then the worst scorers are those which are cheap MPVs, so probably haven't been checked that well, and will have had a hard life too...

Rob.

Our Scooby failed it's MOT because, er, both the cats fell out of the exhaust So, it may be a question of how modded the cars are too. I have no concerns about my Fabia - just flew through it's first MOT with not even a bulb out.

Chris

I think the german TUV is far more difficult to pass than our MOT, if I get this right then all the cars components need to be tuv approved aswell.

Yes, I agree with Rob to a certain extent. The small cars at the top of the heap are likely to have run less than 10k miles in those three years, so it's only logical that they score well. And the fact that the BMW 3-series is really down at the bottom of this T

I think the german TUV is far more difficult to pass than our MOT, if I get this right then all the cars components need to be tuv approved aswell.

Yep Manny, spot on.

And the T

Forgot these...

Any familiar cars among the worst five 10 or 11-year old cars? Citroen ZX, Renault 21, Seat Toledo, Seat Ibiza, and rock-bottom: Skoda Favorit...

8 to 9-year-old: Citroen ZX, Fiat Tipo/Tempra, Renault Twingo, Skoda Favorit, and worst: Seat Toledo (again the old model, of course).

5 and 7-year old: Seat Toledo, Renault Clio, Alfa 145/146, Chrysler Voyager, Renault Twingo.

So apart from our favourite Favorit and that terrible Voyager a bit of a one-sided mediterrenean affair there.

And just to give you an impression what these cars failed on - the four main areas were lights (not specifically car-related, I'd say), engines/drivetrain (mostly oil leaks, so car-related and a reliability indicator), brakes (so hard life or not, but not specifically car-related), environment (so the stuff that comes out of the exhaust - the German go mental about that). Bit strange, that, as I know several of the above cars to be terrible mainly because of their terrible build quality, i.e. bits falling off. But perhaps useless bits falling off would not render them unsafe MOT-wise...

So if only engine and drivetrain lead to car-related failures, how come it's still always the same cars that end up bottom of the list?