The Short Answer
The Renault Captur wins this sibling-ish crossover fight by a margin that is too big to shrug off. In the 2024 public UK MOT record, the Nissan Juke posted a
Pass-Rate Split
The Juke and Captur are often cross-shopped by people who want a small crossover without paying family-SUV money. They also sit under the Renault-Nissan umbrella, and newer generations share the broad small-car engineering world that makes this comparison feel almost internal.
The MOT record does not care about that. It cares whether cars arrived ready to pass.
The Juke has the bigger sample:
The split is clean. The Juke passed first time at 74.74%, failed at 20.78%, and had 4.00% recorded as PRS. The Captur passed first time at 80.05%, failed at 15.98%, and had 3.59% PRS.
That means the Captur is not only winning by scraping more cars through after a quick rectification. It has the better pass rate and the lower fail rate. That is the part that matters. A five-point advantage in first-time pass rate is a real used-buyer signal.
If the cars are the same age, similar mileage, similar money and similarly documented, start with the Renault.
Where They Fail
The Juke failure list has a clear chassis-and-wear flavour. Its top recorded failure reasons are:
- A suspension pin, bush or joint excessively worn: 28,219
- A steering ball joint with excessive wear or free play: 19,586
- Rear registration plate lamp or light source missing or inoperative: 12,603
- Tyre tread depth below the required limit: 11,733
- Brake lining or pad worn below 1.5mm: 10,833
That is not just bulbs and wipers. Suspension joints and steering ball joints are right at the top. For a used Juke buyer, the front end is not a polite secondary check. It is one of the main checks.
The Captur also has suspension wear at the top, but the counts and mix are different:
- A suspension pin, bush or joint excessively worn: 5,645
- Rear registration plate lamp or light source missing or inoperative: 5,310
- Tyre tread depth below the required limit: 4,522
- Spring or spring component fractured or seriously weakened: 3,007
- Wiper blade missing or not clearing the windscreen: 2,619
The Renault list is still very real. It has suspension wear, tyres, springs and wipers. The difference is proportion and outcome. The Captur produces a cleaner first-time pass rate despite carrying several of the same ordinary crossover failure themes.
For the Juke, the warning is front-end looseness. On a test drive, listen for knocks over low-speed bumps, feel for wandering under braking, and check whether the steering self-centres cleanly. On the ramp, bushes, ball joints, track-rod ends and tyres deserve proper attention.
For the Captur, do not get lazy just because the headline number is better. Springs, tyres and rear plate lamps still show up. A cheap Captur with a recent spring failure on one side may need the other side checked properly. A car that has scraped through on tyres twice may be telling you more about the owner than the tyre brand.
Cohort Tells
The age-band split makes the Captur case stronger, but it also shows why the comparison needs care. Most of the record is not made up of brand-new CMF-B-era cars. It is made up of older used cars turning up for annual tests, and that is exactly where buyers need the evidence.
In the pre-2018 band, the Juke recorded 446,906 tests and a 73.40% pass rate. The Captur recorded 167,448 tests and a 78.20% pass rate. That is a 4.80-point Captur lead in the oldest and most useful budget-buying cohort.
That is the biggest practical result in the article. Pre-2018 cars are where deferred maintenance, worn suspension, old tyres, cheap repairs and patchy histories show themselves. The Renault is still clearly ahead.
In the 2018-2020 band, the gap almost disappears. The Juke recorded 53,706 tests and passed at 85.79%. The Captur recorded 55,064 tests and passed at 85.63%. That is effectively level, with the Juke ahead by 0.16 percentage points. In this age band, individual condition should outrank the badge.
The 2021-on band goes back to Renault. The Juke recorded only 424 tests and passed at 90.33%. The Captur recorded 275 tests and passed at 91.64%. Both samples are tiny compared with the older cohorts, so this is supporting evidence rather than a hard buying rule.
The honest read: the Captur wins the full record because it dominates the big older cohort and keeps a small edge in the newest slice. The Juke fights back in 2018-2020, but not by enough to reverse the headline.
That matters if you are shopping carefully. A clean 2019 Juke should not be dismissed because the model-level result favours Renault. A rough 2016 Juke should be inspected with the Captur’s stronger older-car record firmly in mind.
Mileage Tells
Mileage is where the Juke gets its best excuse. The Nissan average mileage at test is 67,281. The Renault average is 52,880. That is a 14,401-mile difference, and it is far too big to ignore.
More miles bring more tyres, more suspension movement, more brake wear, more stone chips, more pothole hits and more owner handovers. A car with higher mileage should be expected to carry more MOT risk. The Juke is doing that here.
The older cohort makes the same point. Pre-2018 Jukes averaged 71,050 miles at test. Pre-2018 Capturs averaged 59,156. The Nissan is carrying 11,894 extra miles in the very band where the Renault’s pass-rate lead is strongest.
That explains some of the Juke’s weaker number. It does not erase it. A model can lose because its fleet is older, harder used, or higher mileage; that is still part of the used-buyer reality. You are not buying a theoretical platform. You are buying from the cars that actually exist in the market.
In the 2018-2020 cohort, the mileage gap narrows. The Juke averaged 36,349 miles and the Captur averaged 34,014. With only 2,335 miles between them, the pass rates land almost level: 85.79% for the Juke and 85.63% for the Captur. That is a useful clue. When age and mileage are closer, the cars look closer.
The 2021-on cars tell a similar small-sample story. Juke average mileage is 19,978. Captur average mileage is 18,762. The Renault still edges the pass rate, but the test counts are so low that nobody should overbuy that result.
The Juke’s problem is not just the car. It is the used Juke population: older, busier, and showing more front-end wear in the record.
That is not a defence strong enough to beat the Captur. It is a buying instruction. If you want a Juke, find the one that has escaped the average pattern: clean suspension history, even tyres, no repeated steering or bush failures, and no lazy lamp-and-wiper neglect.
The Numbers We Trust
These figures come from the 2024 public UK MOT record, filtered to the Nissan Juke and Renault Captur model pages used on this site. The headline number is first-time pass rate. Test count is the number of recorded tests in the same snapshot. Average mileage is the mileage recorded at test.
The clean comparison is:
- Nissan Juke: 501,036 tests, 74.74% pass rate, 67,281 average miles
- Renault Captur: 222,787 tests, 80.05% pass rate, 52,880 average miles
- Pass-rate gap: Captur ahead by 5.31 percentage points
- Pre-2018 pass rates: Juke 73.40%, Captur 78.20%
- 2018-2020 pass rates: Juke 85.79%, Captur 85.63%
- 2021-on pass rates: Juke 90.33%, Captur 91.64%
The top failure lists matter because they show what the pass rate hides. The Juke points hard at suspension pins, bushes, joints and steering ball joints. The Captur points at some of the same crossover wear points, but with a cleaner pass-rate outcome and lower average mileage.
There are limits. The record does not know whether one car has had careful servicing, whether a repair was done privately before test day, whether tyres were changed the week after, or whether an owner ignored advisories for years. It also does not price repairs. A rear plate lamp and a worn suspension joint should not be treated as equal pain.
So use the data in the right order. First, let the model record set your default. Here, that default is Renault Captur. Then read the individual car’s history. Repeated suspension, steering, tyre and brake entries are more important than one old bulb failure.
The Captur’s win is not mystical. It has the better first-time pass rate, lower fail rate, cleaner older-car cohort and much lower average mileage. The Juke has a larger sample and a near-level 2018-2020 cohort, so it is not out of the running. It just needs to prove itself harder at the individual-car level.
For a Juke, inspect the front end like the verdict depends on it, because it does. For a Captur, do not let the better number soften the inspection. Springs, tyres, rear lamps and brake wear still matter.
Verdict
The Renault Captur wins. The 80.05% first-time pass rate beats the Juke’s 74.74%, and the Renault does its best work in the older pre-2018 cohort where used buyers are most exposed to neglected maintenance.
The Nissan Juke is not a bad buy by default. A clean Juke with strong history, tight suspension, even tyre wear and no repeating steering faults can beat an average Captur. The 2018-2020 cohort is close enough that condition should decide between those cars.
But when the cars are comparable, the Captur is the better MOT-data pick. The Juke carries more mileage and a louder front-end wear signal. The Renault has the cleaner statistical case.