All generations and engines together · 94,578 MOT tests in the 2025 data · typical mileage at age 7: 60k
Split by first-registration year. Cars registered in a changeover year can belong to either generation.
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. 53,329 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.
On the D2 and D4 diesels the EGR valve silts up with carbon and stops closing properly, tripping the engine light and letting air leak into the intake. Owners have reported it from as early as 11,000 miles and up to around 40,000 miles. Stripping the intake down to diagnose it can run to £1,500-£2,000, and it isn't covered once the car is out of Volvo's used warranty unless something has actually broken. Volvo has fitted a redesigned valve and pipework as a running fix on some cars under goodwill.
Cars fitted with the Powershift dual-clutch automatic can snatch or shudder pulling away from a standstill, and some owners report a similar judder while cruising at a steady speed. Dealers have issued repeated software updates that don't always cure it fully. A full clutch pack or mechatronic repair has been quoted at over £2,500 through a dealer, against roughly £400 for the same job at an independent gearbox specialist.
On manual cars the clutch pedal can start sticking to the floor or lose its bite point, traced to a failing slave cylinder mounted inside the bellhousing. It has turned up anywhere from around 14,000 to 70,000 miles, well inside what most buyers would expect from a clutch. Because the slave cylinder sits inside the gearbox casing, fixing it means pulling the transmission, so bills of £1,000-£1,600 are common even though the replacement part itself is cheap.
Early cars, roughly 2012 to 2014, have a habit of throwing up several unrelated warning lights at once: power steering, speedometer, SRS, and traction control among them. Owners and independent garages have traced this to a specific three-pin connector that isn't seated properly; reseating or wiggling the plug clears the fault codes, though it can come back. It tends to surface from around 49,000-50,000 miles and there's no factory recall covering it.
A number of early V40s develop door locks that stick or stop responding to the key or button, most often on the rear doors. It tends to appear just as the three-year factory warranty runs out, commonly by around four years old. A dealer will want close to £1,000 to replace all four actuators, though Volvo has sometimes made a goodwill contribution of around 20 percent, and a squirt of released lubricant fixes some cars, at least for a while.
Diesels used mainly for short trips can struggle to complete a DPF regeneration, and some owners have failed the MOT emissions test with readings roughly double the legal limit. A dealer diagnosis and clean or replacement has been quoted at around £1,100, with no guarantee it won't come back if the car keeps doing short runs. It tends to go hand in hand with the EGR carbon build-up above, since both come from the same low-load driving pattern.
Built from the two sections above.
Same segment (Family hatchbacks), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.