Nissan Juke vs Vauxhall Mokka: small crossover smackdown
The Nissan Juke and Vauxhall Mokka sell the same idea from two different angles: raised driving position, town-friendly footprint, more attitude than a plain hatchback. The MOT record is less interested in stance. In 2024, the Mokka landed the better headline pass rate, but the gap is small enough that age, mileage and the exact failure pattern matter more than badge loyalty.
Pass-rate split
The clean score is Mokka 76.30%, Juke 74.74%. That is a 1.56 percentage point win for the Vauxhall across a combined 883,778 tests.
That sounds narrow because it is. This is not one car being brilliant and the other being hopeless. It is two mass-market small crossovers sitting in the same broad reliability weather, with the Mokka slightly less likely to leave the test lane with a fail recorded.
The sample sizes are strong: 501,036 Juke tests and 382,742 Mokka tests. That makes the headline result hard to wave away as noise. The Juke has the larger footprint in the 2024 record, but the Mokka still has more than enough volume to take seriously.
The Juke recorded 374,467 passes, 104,119 fails and 20,042 pass-with-rectification outcomes. The Mokka recorded 292,043 passes, 71,560 fails and 17,467 pass-with-rectification outcomes.
The Mokka’s fail rate is 18.70%. The Juke’s is 20.78%. That is the more useful garage-facing version of the same story: for every hundred tests, the Juke throws up about two more outright failures than the Mokka.
Where they fail
The Juke’s failure profile is heavily mechanical. Its top listed failure reason is a suspension pin, bush or joint excessively worn, with 28,219 records. Second is steering ball joint excessive wear or free play, at 19,586. That is not a cosmetic pattern. It points towards front-end wear, road impact and age catching up with a car that is often used as cheap everyday transport.
The next Juke items are more familiar MOT clutter: rear registration plate lamp missing or inoperative, tyre tread depth below requirement, and brake lining or pad worn below 1.5mm. Those are not rare-car problems. They are small crossover ownership problems: tyres run too long, brakes left until the warning noise, lights ignored until test day.
Top Juke failure items:
- Suspension pin, bush or joint excessively worn: 28,219
- 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 not in accordance with requirements: 11,733
- Brake lining or pad worn below 1.5mm: 10,833
The Mokka has a different flavour. Its top two items are both suspension joint dust cover failures: missing or no longer preventing dirt ingress at 20,996, and severely deteriorated at 17,180. Third is spring or spring component fractured or seriously weakened, with 10,208 records.
That does not make the Mokka fragile by default. It does mean a used Mokka inspection should not be a quick walk round the paint. Get it high enough to see boots, covers, coils and play. A cheap-looking crossover can become an annoying one if the suspension has been left to creak through winters.
Top Mokka failure items:
- Suspension joint dust cover missing or no longer sealing: 20,996
- Suspension joint dust cover severely deteriorated: 17,180
- Spring or spring component fractured or seriously weakened: 10,208
- Wiper blade missing or not clearing the windscreen: 7,626
- Brake lining or pad worn below 1.5mm: 7,317
The sharp difference is that the Juke’s top failures read more like wear in working parts. The Mokka’s read more like protective parts failing around the suspension, plus springs. Both matter, but they guide different inspections.
Cohort tells
Age splits change the story. The pre-2018 cars dominate both samples, and they are where most used buyers will shop. In that older cohort, the Mokka passes at 75.07% across 317,098 tests. The Juke passes at 73.40% across 446,906 tests. Mokka wins the old-car fight by 1.67 points.
That matters because older cars reveal how a model copes after years of British roads, missed maintenance and budget tyres. On that basis, the Mokka keeps its nose ahead.
Then the middle cohort flips it. For 2018-2020 cars, the Juke posts an 85.79% pass rate from 53,706 tests. The Mokka is at 82.25% from 65,527 tests. That is a 3.54 point win for the Juke, and it is the most buyer-relevant counterpunch in the data.
The 2021+ cohort is less useful because the sample is tiny compared with the older stock: 424 Juke tests and 117 Mokka tests. The Mokka records 91.45%; the Juke records 90.33%. Fine, but do not build a buying philosophy around 117 tests. Newer cars usually pass well unless they have tyres, wipers, damage or neglect.
The better read is this: older Mokkas shade older Jukes, while 2018-2020 Jukes look cleaner than equivalent Mokkas. If you are buying a cheaper early car, the Mokka has the data advantage. If you are shopping a later used example, the Juke deserves more respect than the pub verdict usually gives it.
Mileage tells
The average Juke in the 2024 test record had 67,281 miles at test. The average Mokka had 58,440 miles. That 8,841-mile gap is important.
A car with more miles should usually have more suspension, brake, steering and tyre wear. The Juke’s lower pass rate is not happening in isolation. It is carrying a higher average mileage burden across the sample. Some of the Mokka’s advantage may be genuine durability, but some of it is probably fleet shape: lower mileage cars tend to behave better at test.
The cohort mileage split supports that. Pre-2018 Jukes averaged 71,050 miles, while pre-2018 Mokkas averaged 62,838. In the 2018-2020 band, the Juke averaged 36,349 miles and the Mokka averaged 37,236. That middle group is almost mileage-matched, and there the Juke wins on pass rate.
That is the most interesting part of the whole comparison. The headline says Mokka. The matched-age, similar-mileage middle cohort says Juke. The used-market answer depends on what you are actually buying.
If the choice is a high-mileage early Juke against a lower-mileage early Mokka, the Mokka is the calmer pick. If the choice is a well-kept 2018-2020 Juke against a similar-mileage Mokka, the Juke’s 85.79% cohort pass rate is hard to ignore.
This is where advert photos lie. A shiny crossover on finance wheels can still be sitting on tired suspension, cheap tyres and weak wipers. The MOT record will not tell you whether the previous owner cared, but it does show where the model population tends to spend its failure budget.
The numbers we trust
The strongest numbers here are the model-level pass rates, test counts, average mileage and pre-2018 / 2018-2020 cohorts. They have big enough samples to be useful.
The weakest numbers are the 2021+ cohorts. The pass rates look good for both cars, but the Juke has only 424 tests and the Mokka only 117 in that band. Treat those as directional, not decisive.
The Juke data is also pulled down by age and mileage. Its pre-2018 cohort is huge, with 446,906 tests, and that older group passes at 73.40%. That is the shape of the Juke market: lots of older cars, lots of miles, plenty of front-end wear.
The Mokka’s headline is stronger because it combines a higher pass rate with a lower fail rate. But the failure list is not soft. Dust covers, springs, wipers, pads and lamps are all common enough to make a pre-purchase inspection worthwhile.
The Mokka wins the spreadsheet. The Juke wins one important cohort. Neither wins if you buy blind.
For private buyers, I would read it like this. Pick the Mokka if you want the better all-sample result and you are mainly shopping older, affordable cars. Pick the Juke if you find a clean 2018-2020 example with evidence of tyres, brakes and suspension work. Avoid either one if the seller treats MOT advisories as decoration.