All generations and engines together · 12,922 MOT tests in the 2025 data · typical mileage at age 7: 71k
Computed from DVSA MOT results, all of Great Britain, 2025. Nothing here is opinion.
Share of tests where each item was recorded. The dark tick is the class average across all tracked models; bars are scaled within each group.
The rows that judge the model rather than its keeper. 12,892 tests in this band.
Tyres, pads and stone chips say more about how the car was driven and maintained than about how it was built.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
Front coil springs corrode where they sit in the top mount cup and can snap without warning, sometimes on cars as young as three or four years old. A snapped spring end can puncture a front tyre or clonk on full lock. It shares the Fiesta's platform and parts bin, so this is the same weak point as the Mk5/Mk6 Fiesta. No formal recall was ever issued, Ford is reported to have quietly revised the mounting, but plenty of cars on the road predate that.
The 1.4 TDCi (shared with the Fiesta and Mazda2) is prone to injector seal failure and sticking injectors, showing up as misfires, running on three cylinders, hesitation or a strong diesel smell. It tends to appear from around 80-100k miles and gets worse if the car has done mostly short journeys. Reconditioned injectors are cheaper than new but still add up if more than one has gone; expect £150-400 per injector plus diagnosis time. No recall, just a known weak point of this engine family.
Water finding its way into the engine bay or wiring connectors can corrode ignition coil packs, plug leads and multipin connectors, causing misfires, rough idling, stalling or random warning lights. One documented case involved sudden heavy steering plus oil, ignition and engine warning lights together, which cleared after a restart, traced back to corroded connectors between the ECU and fuel system. It is intermittent by nature so can be hard to pin down at a pre-purchase check.
On the TDCi diesels the dual-mass flywheel can wear and cause juddering or vibration through the clutch pedal, worse on take-up from cold or in traffic. Garages generally recommend replacing the DMF along with the clutch rather than just the clutch on its own, since a worn flywheel will chew through a new clutch fast. A combined clutch and DMF job runs somewhere in the £400-700 bracket depending on the garage.
This is the folklore version of the measured signature fault for this class: rear caliper brackets and handbrake cables corrode, especially on cars that sit for days at a time, leaving pads stuck to discs or the handbrake dragging or barely holding on a hill. Owners report needing rear cylinders and short handbrake cables replaced as a set rather than one part at a time. It lines up with why brakes keep showing up as the class-average MOT fail point: this isn't pad wear, it's corrosion seizing moving parts that then fail an MOT brake test outright.
Some owners of the 1.4 semi-auto (Ford's clutchless manual/Durashift-style box, not a conventional torque-converter auto) report an intermittent fault where the box hesitates or behaves oddly, separate from the injector and coil-spring issues above. It's a minority-interest gearbox in this range and parts/specialist knowledge are thinner on the ground than for the manual, so factor that into a purchase if the car has it.
Built from the two sections above.
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