All generations and engines together · 105,986 MOT tests in the 2025 data · typical mileage at age 7: 45k
One of the best superminis for its age, though better than most per mile driven. Watch brakes and suspension. A solid used buy, provided its MOT history has no repeating brakes advisories.
Split by first-registration year. Cars registered in a changeover year can belong to either generation.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press, with how well each report stands up. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
Multiple owners of post-2015 Mazda 2s report front pads and discs needing replacement at 12,000 to 13,500 miles rather than the 40,000-plus you'd expect, at roughly £250 a time. Brakes are the standout measured MOT failure for superminis as a class, and this owner pattern of pads and discs going early lines up with that signature. Worth factoring into running costs even on a young, low-mileage car.
Owners of 2009-2013 Mazda 2s report knocking or clunking from the steering rack, and in the worst cases a full steering column failure. Software resets sometimes calm it down but the noise often comes back, and a proper fix has run owners £1,000 to £1,600 at a dealer. No public TSB or recall found for it, it just keeps turning up in owner reports.
Some early-2010s petrol Mazda 2s develop a metallic rattle on start-up. Dealers often wave it off as harmless piston slap, and in plenty of cars that is exactly what it is. But a handful of owners have had it turn out to be bore scoring and broken piston rings, with a full engine swap costing over £2,000 out of warranty, so it is worth taking seriously rather than assuming it is nothing.
A run of 2016-2017 Mazda 2s lost cold air through a failed condenser or evaporator, sometimes at low mileage. Mazda has acknowledged the issue and says it was fixed in later production, which is about as close to an official admission as this model gets. If the air con on a used example does not get properly cold within a minute or so, budget for a repair.
The 1.4D shares its injectors with the same troubled unit fitted to various Citroën, Peugeot and Ford diesels of the era, and Mazda 2 owners report the same pattern, including cars needing all four injectors replaced. The 1.6D diesel, by contrast, has a much cleaner record on the same reports. Only relevant if you are looking at the smaller diesel.
Owners across both generations report a scattergun mix of electrical niggles: satnav freezing or losing the route, fuel gauges sticking on full, DAB radio switching itself on and off, and occasional false alerts from the collision warning system in low sun. None of it strands the car, but it needs a software reset or a trip to the dealer and can be a hassle to pin down. No pattern-wide TSB found.
Ranked from this model’s own MOT record, then from what owners report.
Saveable checklistThe physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
The physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
The physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
Drawn from the reports above rather than the MOT data. These are the model-specific ones.
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. 34,090 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.
Same segment (Superminis), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.