All generations and engines together · 17,931 MOT tests in the 2025 data
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. 17,931 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.
Pre-facelift cars (2020-2023) run a 10in touchscreen that owners and reviewers describe as slow, glitchy and prone to crashing completely mid-drive, on top of the software problems that delayed the car's original UK launch. Volkswagen accepted the criticism and fitted a larger 12.9in screen with reworked software from the 2023 facelift onward. Buyers of earlier cars should expect occasional screen freezes or reboots; a full software update at a dealer usually settles it and costs nothing under warranty.
The volume/temperature sliders below the screen and the swipe pads on the steering wheel are unlit on early cars, so they're guesswork in the dark, and both are easy to nudge by accident (owners report turning the volume up when meaning to adjust cruise control). It's not a mechanical failure so it costs nothing to fix, but it's one of the most repeated gripes in reviews and forums, and VW's own chief admitted the firm "got it wrong" with the haptic controls. Some owners adapt and stop noticing it; others find it a dealbreaker, hence the disputed tag.
Early cars use harder, cheaper-feeling dashboard and door plastics that reviewers marked down against rivals at the time. The 2023 facelift replaced these with soft, foam-backed touch points and better-quality trim. It's a perceived-value issue rather than something that breaks, but it affects what a pre-facelift car feels worth versus a post-2023 one.
Honest John's review sums up the earliest cars as having "the hallmarks of a good car that had been rushed into production, with a few rough finishes and electrical gremlins." This lines up with the well-documented software delays that pushed the car's launch back to September 2020, with some early cars even delivered without their connected features working. No specific recall or TSB was found covering this broadly, so treat it as an elevated-risk period on the earliest (2020/21) cars rather than a named fault.
Built from the two sections above.
Same segment (Family hatchbacks), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.