The Buyer Short Answer
The Ford Fiesta is the better MOT bet, but the Vauxhall Corsa is close enough that you should not buy the badge and ignore the car. Across the 2024 public UK MOT record, the Corsa posted a
Pass-rate split
This is not a rare-car comparison where one odd batch can twist the result. These are two of Britain’s default small cars, and the sample is huge.
The Corsa recorded
The Fiesta wins the headline split. It also does that while arriving at test with slightly higher average mileage: 73,803 miles against the Corsa’s 71,203. That matters. If the Ford were passing more often because it was being tested younger, fresher or less used, the result would feel softer. It is not.
The Corsa is not weak. A 70.79% pass rate across more than 1.5 million tests is still the record of a normal, durable, mass-market small car. The issue is comparison. When both cars are common, cheap to run, easy to repair and heavily represented in the records, a 1.53-point gap is enough to break the tie.
For a buyer, the rule is plain: if condition, price, age and history are equal, the Fiesta gets first look. If the Corsa has the cleaner MOT history, better tyres and fewer repeat advisories, buy the Corsa.
Where they fail
The Corsa’s top failure reasons point towards rubber covers, springs and simple lighting neglect.
Its top five recorded failure reasons are:
- Steering rack gaiter or ball-joint dust cover damaged or deteriorated: 79,467
- Spring or spring component fractured or seriously weakened: 58,145
- Rear registration plate lamp or light source missing or inoperative: 56,677
- Steering rack gaiter or ball-joint dust cover missing or no longer keeping dirt out: 35,116
- Tyre tread depth below the required limit: 28,436
That is a useful shopping list. On a Corsa, the underside inspection is not optional. A split gaiter sounds minor, but it is there to keep dirt and water out of moving parts. When the same area appears twice in the top five, it is not a quirk.
Springs are the other Corsa warning. A tired spring can be cheap compared with bigger repairs, but it still tells you something about use. Lots of short urban trips, potholes, speed humps and deferred maintenance make themselves visible here.
The Fiesta’s failure pattern is more front-end wear and owner neglect.
Its top five recorded failure reasons are:
- Suspension pin, bush or joint excessively worn: 79,622
- Stop lamp missing or inoperative: 64,398
- Tyre tread depth below the required limit: 51,324
- Steering ball joint with excessive wear or free play: 48,181
- Suspension joint dust cover severely deteriorated: 43,969
The Fiesta looks tougher on pass rate, but it is not magic. Bushes, ball joints, suspension covers and tyres are all high in the table. A Fiesta that knocks over bumps, wanders under braking, or has uneven tyre wear needs proper checking before money changes hands.
The big shared warning is repeated cheap failures. Lamps, wipers and tyres are easy to check before a test. If an MOT history shows the same lazy failures year after year, you are not looking at bad luck. You are looking at how the car has been owned.
Cohort tells
The cohort split is where this stops being a badge argument and becomes a buyer decision.
For pre-2018 cars, the Corsa passes 69.73% first time from 1,406,909 tests. The Fiesta passes 70.65% from 2,236,442 tests. That is a Ford win, but only by 0.92 percentage points. In the older-car market, condition beats badge. A clean Corsa with a straight MOT history is a better buy than a tired Fiesta with a long list of advisories.
For 2018-2020 cars, the gap becomes much more useful. The Corsa passes 82.69% from 124,156 tests. The Fiesta passes 87.15% from 245,203 tests. That is the clearest Fiesta advantage in the whole comparison. It is also a key used-buying band: modern enough for decent equipment, old enough to be affordable, and common enough that buyers have choice.
For 2021-on cars, the Corsa shows 88.61% and the Fiesta 88.04%. That looks like a Corsa win, but the samples are not equal. The Corsa has only 237 tests in this bucket, while the Fiesta has 6,666. Treat the Corsa number as interesting, not decisive.
The cohort read is therefore simple. The Fiesta is better across the full record and stronger in the high-value 2018-2020 slice. Older cars are too close to buy lazily. Newer cars do not give enough Corsa volume to overturn the wider picture.
Mileage tells
Average mileage adds weight to the Ford result.
The Corsa averaged 71,203 miles at test. The Fiesta averaged 73,803. That means the Fiesta is not being flattered by a lower-mileage fleet. It passed more often while carrying about 2,600 extra miles.
The same pattern appears in the older cohort. Pre-2018 Corsas averaged 74,338 miles at test. Pre-2018 Fiestas averaged 78,109. The Ford carries nearly 3,800 more miles in the age band where wear matters most, yet still has the higher pass rate.
That is the strongest pro-Fiesta argument in the data.
The 2018-2020 band is cleaner because the mileage is almost identical: 35,918 for the Corsa and 36,101 for the Fiesta. With mileage basically level, the Fiesta’s pass-rate lead becomes harder to dismiss. This is the part of the record that should influence buyers most.
The 2021-on band flips some of that. The Corsa averages 24,704 miles, the Fiesta 21,954. But the Corsa sample is tiny, so it should not carry the whole verdict.
The Fiesta’s edge is not just a pass-rate edge. It is a pass-rate edge with higher mileage.
That does not mean every Fiesta is better. It means the ordinary Fiesta starts from a slightly stronger statistical position. The actual car still has to pass the MOT-history smell test: no repeat tyre neglect, no ignored suspension advisories, no annual lamp failures, no pattern of “fixed just enough”.
The numbers we trust
These figures come from the 2024 public UK MOT record, filtered to the model slugs used on this site.
The clean comparison is:
- Vauxhall Corsa: 1,531,302 tests, 70.79% pass rate, 71,203 average miles
- Ford Fiesta: 2,488,311 tests, 72.32% pass rate, 73,803 average miles
- Pass-rate gap: Fiesta ahead by 1.53 percentage points
- Pre-2018 pass rates: Corsa 69.73%, Fiesta 70.65%
- 2018-2020 pass rates: Corsa 82.69%, Fiesta 87.15%
- 2021-on pass rates: Corsa 88.61%, Fiesta 88.04%
The records do not tell you service quality, repair bills, tyre brand, previous accident damage or whether a seller fixed faults properly before listing the car. They also do not price the failures. A stop-lamp fail and a worn suspension joint are very different ownership problems.
That is why the top failure reasons matter. The Corsa asks for close inspection around steering gaiters, ball-joint dust covers and springs. The Fiesta asks for a hard look at bushes, ball joints, tyres and stop lamps.
Use the data as a filter, then read the individual car’s history.
A good history has boring passes, sensible advisories and evidence that problems were fixed. A bad one has the same families of failure repeating for years. Repetition is the warning.
Verdict
The Ford Fiesta wins. It has the higher all-age pass rate, the larger test sample, the stronger 2018-2020 cohort and higher average mileage at test. That is a solid combination.
The Corsa is still a rational used buy. It is common, familiar, cheap to understand and not far behind in the older-car cohort. But the data does not give it the tie. On equal condition, the Fiesta is the cleaner pick.