All generations and engines together · 28,733 MOT tests in the 2025 data · typical mileage at age 7: 57k
Middling for its age among small SUVs, and better than most per mile driven. Watch brakes and suspension. A fair 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.
On the 1.8 and 2.2 diesel engines, if the DPF can't get hot enough to burn off soot (typical on cars doing lots of short, stop-start trips), the ECU squirts extra fuel in to force a burn and some of it ends up washing down into the sump instead. The result is oil level creeping up past the max mark and getting thinner, which if ignored wears out bearings and can wreck the engine. It tends to show up on town-only cars rather than at any fixed mileage. A caught-early fix is just an oil and filter change; left unchecked it can mean a four-figure repair.
Owners and Honest John both report rear calipers sticking or failing once out of warranty, and Mitsubishi's own recall history includes a batch of 2013-2016 cars where the parking brake caliper shaft boots weren't sealed properly, letting water in and corroding the mechanism. This lines up with brakes being the model's measured MOT weak spot: the folklore complaint (a dragging or sticking rear wheel) is exactly the kind of fault that only becomes an MOT failure once it's already stuck, rather than showing up early as an advisory. A caliper strip, clean and rebuild (or replacement) runs to roughly £150-350 a side.
ASX CVT automatics can develop a whine or rattle under acceleration along with a mild shudder or hesitation at steady speed, usually put down to worn primary or secondary pulley bearings or degraded transmission fluid. Owner and forum reports put this in the 60,000-90,000 mile range. Old, unchanged CVT fluid seems to make it worse, so a full fluid and filter service is the first cheap thing to try before assuming the box itself is failing. A rebuild or replacement CVT unit is a big bill, into four figures.
The 1.6 and 2.0 MIVEC petrol engines use a timing chain rather than a belt, and a number of owners describe a rattle for the first few seconds after a cold start that fades once oil pressure builds. It's most associated with cars from the earlier part of production (roughly 2011-2015) and with cars that have had stretched or skipped oil services, since poor lubrication is what lets the chain and tensioner wear. Replacing the chain, guides and tensioner is labour-intensive and typically costs several hundred pounds.
A recurring complaint, especially on cars from around 2015 on, is the Bluetooth losing connection or refusing to re-pair a phone after a couple of years of use, along with generally clunky, laggy infotainment software. It's an annoyance rather than a safety issue and there's no widely reported permanent fix beyond a head unit software update or, in stubborn cases, a replacement unit. Budget £150-400 if you end up sourcing a used replacement head unit.
Diesel owners report turbo problems (loss of power, smoke under load) and cracked exhaust manifold welds appearing from around 95,000-110,000 miles, though opinion is split on whether this is a design weak point or just normal wear for a diesel turbo at that kind of mileage. A cracked manifold gives away a ticking or hissing noise near the top of the engine before it gets serious. A manifold repair is a few hundred pounds; a turbo replacement is more like £700-1,200.
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.
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. 12,244 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 (Small SUVs), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.