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A SELF-STYLED ‘urban SUV’ had the highest pass rate of any leading vehicle that went through the NCT last year.
An analysis of NCT tests carried out on more than 1.4 million vehicles last year found that 85.42% of the hybrid Toyota C-HR cars inspected passed their initial test.
Cars were tested at 49 NCT centres around Ireland in 2021, with Portlaoise having the highest pass rate at 60.22%.
In contrast, just 38.12% of cars tested in Castlerea last year passed on the first attempt. 15 test centres had pass rates below half, while the overall pass rate was 52.8%.
An analysis of figures recently published by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) found that, of the 200 most popular car models, just four had pass rates of more than 80%.
The Suzuki Vitara had a pass rate of 81.77%, while 80.94% of Renault Kadjars made the grade. The pricier Mercedes Benz CLA – the only car in the top four that is not an SUV – had a pass rate of 80.2%.
On its website Toyota brands the C-HR as “the urban SUV range that answers all the questions of the city”. The Japanese-manufactured car was launched in Ireland in 2016.
Despite their high NCT performance, Oisín Coghlan, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth believes taxes on SUVs should be increased to discourage sales.
“It is past time to break our addiction to SUVs. In 2021 they accounted for 55% of all new car sales in Ireland and 45% globally,” he said.
The overall figures show that the model that was most tested in 2021 was the Volkswagen Golf. Of the 71,962 Golfs inspected, just over half (52.95%) passed.
The second most popular model tested was the Ford Focus, but just 47.23% of these 71,723 cars were successful first time.
Of the models which had more than 1,000 cars tested, the Lexus IS200 fared worst with a pass rate of just 27.73%., while the Volkswagen Bora (28.28%) and the Seat Cordoba (29.45%) also had pass rates below 30%.
Year
Unsurprisingly, the age of the car plays a leading role in whether it passes the NCT. For example, the newest Lexus IS200 to be tested last year was registered in 2013, while the newest Cordoba and Bora cars tested were registered in 2010 and 2006 respectively.
Cars with a 2015-reg had a pass rate of 73.2%, compared to just 34.66% success for cars that are ten years older.
A spokesperson for the RSA also pointed to a number of other factors that can affect whether a car passes its NCT
“The mileage that a car has undergone has a marked effect on pass rates, with larger mileage vehicles more prone to failure. This particularly affects some rural locations,” they said.
They have also seen road conditions as playing a role in NCT performance, with poor driving surfaces leading to problems with a car’s brakes and suspension.
“An estimated one third of customers do not service their cars before testing and the failure rate of these is on average 11% higher than those that have been serviced ahead of the test,” the spokesperson added.
Fail rates
Of 1.4 million cars tested in 2021, just over 665,000 (47.2%) failed their first test.
Lighting and electrical issues was the most common fault and was found in 35% of all failed vehicles. This was followed by steering and suspension problems, found in 32.9% of failed cars.
More than one in four failed cars (25.49%) didn’t pass the ‘side slip’ test, which measures how much a car deviates to the left or right by simulating driving on a straight, flat road without touching the steering wheel.
Of the leading models, Peugeot 206 and 307 cars recorded fail rates of more than 32% when it came to lighting and electrical issues, while 34.99% of Volkswagen Boras and 34.32% of Citroen C5 cars had problems with steering and suspension.
Anna Cullen of AA Ireland advised motorists to prepare before the NCT.
“Clean the vehicle thoroughly, ensure tyres are at the correct pressure and the right tread depth, check the lights are working properly and make sure the engine is in a fit state to be tested,” she said.
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How can there be such disparity between testing centres? Is their equipment not calibrated correctly or is there subjective opinion from the testers?
@lelookcoco: It’s hard to make meaningful comparisons without having information about the age and mileage of cars being tested. Maybe there is a disparity in testing or maybe the cars tested in some areas were older, with more mileage and possibly driving those miles on less well cared for roads… Not enough information given – be nice to know the median age and mileage of cars tested in each centre.
@lelookcoco: Maybe it has something to do with the road conditions. Going by the state of my local roads it’s surprising anyone passed.
@Sarah-J. Mc Hugh: yes. A lot of missing information. But then, there wouldn’t be anyone to read it as it wouldn’t be so spectacular.
@lelookcoco: Reposting this at the top of the comments because it’s important. You can get an NCT test for free if they don’t offer you one within 28 days. See the NCT customer charter Point 5 below. I’ve done this. Simply refer to the charter when they ask for payment and you will not be charged.
@C: thays good to know but with the hole country in chaos trying to get an nct within 28 seems like we should all be getting free ones
@lelookcoco: Must be a lot of crap cars in Roscommon. It is a strange one especially as it’s two relatively rural centres. If it had been Castlrea and say Stillorgan I might not have been as surprised.
@lelookcoco: never mind their equipment what about the rules. My car failed cause no rear reg plate light. Was told run and get one fixed as per the rules and come back for visual check,car passed, heard stories of car failing cause both were not working?
Had a car with a fixed front wing indicator,passed in a test center in Portlaoise, next year failed in my local,same light etc, I argued with them over the “terminology of the definition” and they passed it.
Whatever about a car failing on an obvious mechanical/wear and tear failure the interpretation of spec need at lot to be desired
Unrelated to the article, but, I had a look at friends of the earths audited accounts. Why the heck does Trocaire donate money to them?
@Laura McCarthy: Probably because Trocaire beneficiaries are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
@Benny McHale: Surely Trocaire are best suited themselves then and not friends of the earth IRELAND
Nct took alot of dangerous vehicles off the road in the beginning. but some of the things they are finding are pathetic especially the decisions made by the tester themselves. Iv had cars fail because the tester decided (without measuring) the disk was worn-out but pass the break force test and when actually measured the disc was well within the limits. wait time for a test is shambolic 3 months or more in some centers.
@barry moore: I had a car fail because the driver door opened about 2″ further than it should have according to the tester. Had to buy a new hinge.
I asked him how would that affect the cars performance and he couldn’t tell me.
@barry moore: I got a date in January 23 for a test that was meant to have been in June 22. Madness.
@Stuart Doherty: The door was fine as it was a pretty new car. He claimed it opened up too far. I didn’t see any difference in door openings between the driver door and the passenger door. It was his opinion with nothing to support his “theory”.
@Peter: if you call them you can get a much earlier date.
@David Corrigan: failed me for a slight tear in the lining of the drivers seat…
@Edmund Orlando: Unreal isn’t it? Nothing to do with the mechanical performance of the car at all.
@Peter: You can get an NCT test for free if they can’t offer you one within 28 days. See the customer charter point 5. I’ve done this, mentioned the charter at the check in desk and was not charged.
@barry moore: Dust cap on tracking failed me, got done at local mechanic, he kept old ones to show me they were perfect. I wouldnt have believed it if he hadnt showed me. It really is a money racket. With those fail rates there are a lot of unroadworthy cars driving around all the time. Ive brought several cars for mot up north and found them very practical and fair. If your car fails it fails for a good reason. Down here its very much random if you pass or fail. Its a poor system here. I was so annoyed this year due long wait and had to travel far to get a test before nct expired and need car for work and then to fail for something that didnt need work. Frustrating
@C: how does that work if you have to pay at the time of booking when booking online? Do they refund you or did you book by phone?
@Shay James Barry: I was on the priority waiting list. You can ask to be placed on this if you call them. They texted through a booking so I had to pay at the desk of the NCT centre. You would be within your rights to ask for a refund if you paid by card online but no doubt they would make of more difficult to get. No harm asking for it though.
@Edmund Orlando: Did they explain to you exactly why that was? A safety issue? It sounds absolutely bizarre.
Nct is a total racket; be rich or go home – forced me off road with 80k miles, perfect car, but clutch of nonsense problems cost €1500+ I don’t have; now I never get to see family I used childmind for once a week (which was the sole use of the car)
My car passed its test and then the pandemic came and I did a total of about 1000 miles in a whole year as the car was basically parked up. Did the NCT and was told that the brake discs were “badly worn” with the implication that it was on the verge of being taken off the road and that I should get the discs replaced immediately.
Took it to a local garage and they asked me why I wanted to replace the discs (after fitting them), told them the NCT guy said I had to. The mechanic just rolled his eyes and shook his head. At least I’m keeping him in a job.
@Digital Marketing Growth with Jarvis.ai-Free Trial: had a similar experience 4 years, ago with a van
@Digital Marketing Growth with Jarvis.ai-Free Trial: I wonder if you didn’t replace just gave them a ‘wipe’ to make then look newer might you have passed? Similarly we had an issue and had to replace something, mechanic wondered why we failed at all but we got it replaced, as you do (can’t remember name of it now) but it passed the 2nd time. Money racket in a lot of cases.
@Lydia McLoughlin: I had a car that failed because of an issue with the steering shaft something about a seal which meant I’d have to get a new steering shaft, I brought it to a mechanic and he couldn’t see anything wrong with it so he cleaned it up and they passed it on a retest
In general I am not a subscriber to conspiracy theories….. but as regards the NCT I have my suspicions that the Revenue, car manufacturers and the car dealers and repair garages are all getting a big slice of the reward that the NCT has brought them.
The NCT was introduced ostensibly to reduce the dangers of an ageing car population, and we were told , to comply with EU rules. Since it’s introduction it has gone from a relatively straightforward test of brakes, steering, tyres and exhaust emissions to a much more comprehensive test of things that are of no consequence to safety issues, like failing because of any body perforation. So if your car has a tiny spot of rust in the centre of a door, that can be shown as a perforation through rust- it’s a fail ! How could that affect safety ?
@John Phelan: Of course nobody wants any dangerous cars on the roads, but before the test we knew that if we had an old car we couldn’t push it too hard or we could end up in trouble. The NCT introduced a level of FEAR into the owners of eight year old plus cars that often leads to them getting rid of their perfectly good cars prematurely. Have our roads become more safe since the coming of the test ? No ! Newer cars and growing numbers have caused more speeding and more crashes. Bring back the Ford Cortina I say.
@John Phelan: Car manufacturers have no involvement whatsoever with the NCT test or gain anything from it.
@John Phelan: The NCT was introduced in Ireland in 2000 when we had over 400 fatalities on the roads. Last year it was 136. I know a lot of other factors contributed but car quality helped.
Maybe more relevant was the number of serious injuries which more or less halved within three years. The NCT did take a lot of death traps off the road.
@Leonard Barry: surely it has to affect the level of sales of new cars, as people feel the pressure to keep updating that 2022 reg number as soon as it gets to three or four years old ? And it’s very much in the interests of the government take from VRT and VAT.
@Bert Carolan: granted a huge improvement on the number, but as with all statistics they are not always a reliable indicator of the reasons behind them. I would have to take into account things like the seat belt laws, bigger penalties for traffic offences and the big improvements in our main roads and motorways. It has been shown by many studies that motorways, whether here with a max of 120 kmph or France at 130kmph account for very few of the fatal crashes in spite of their high mileage usage by motorists. Also most vehicle accidents occur within an 800 meter radius of our homes.
It’s just not possible to accredit the better figures to the effects of the NCT on the statistical evidence available.
@Bert Carolan: Bad driving accounts for most road fatalities. Speed restrictions, tougher drink driving laws and better roads are what have contributed most to the reduction in numbers of deaths due to motor accidents, not the introduction of the NCT. Still, a single death is too many let alone the 136 recorded last year.
@Bert Carolan: I suspect many of the people commenting weren’t around or to young to remember a lot of the garbage people used to drive before the nct. Much rarer to see cars spewing fumes from their exhaust these days.
On the other side of the coin, you need to be wary of the pre test. My regular garage told me the car would fail as the brakes needed attention at a cost of €800. Brought it to the test centre, passed no problem. In fact the guy there complimented me on the condition of the car given that it’s 15 years old.
@Paul Shepherd: Good point Paul, I think there needs to be better monitoring of garages regarding stuff like this and where they charge for work they have not done. Maybe such monitoring is already in place but it doesn’t seem very effective.
I would be very wary of big name garages , someone has to pay for that carpet and glass frontage.
@Paul Shepherd: Never understood why anyone would pay almost twice the cost of the NCT for a pre test
@Bert Carolan: on this point I fully agree with you. Many years ago I had a Toyota Land Cruiser that I had my great local mechanic fit a new timing belt to ( ahead of the suggested mileage ) and as the clock reached the mileage for change, the warning light came on. Not knowing then how to turn it off, I took it to my nearest Toyota main dealer and was quoted €80 to “ connect it to the computer and erase the light “ minimum charge €80 ! Also I’d need to leave it with them for two hours. Shocked I went home and consulted Dr. Google and found I could do it myself without any tools or computer in 12 seconds. Rip off or what ?
Sometimes it’s a good thing to have a car fail as it only costs €55 for a full inspection and a printed report report of things to be addressed. You can pay a private company hundreds to do multipoint inspection then based on that private inspection you pay a mechanic or garage possibly hundreds more to put things right with no guarantee that it will pass an nct inspection
The usual rubbish from Oisín Coghlan, making no distinction between older SUVs which are taxed higher already due to larger combustion engines and newer models which are partly or fully electrified and some of the most efficient cars on the road. I mean fair enough, look at a tax regime that tackles size and weight, if someone can make a case for it, but shilling for a blanket SUV tax, when SUVs by definition range from a tall hatchback like a Renault Captur all the way to the Rolls Royce Cullinan or Range Rover, is just ill-informed nonsense.
Mine kept failing on imbalanced rear handbrake although overall it was powerful enough to stop car it wasn’t balanced. Mechanic tried more than once and was almost embarrassed he had to fail it. Have to go by the computer he said. Where’s the commonsense though?
Our car went for its first NCT from new. We were fairly confident it would pass but it failed. They said the tow bar that we had fitted at the time of purchase by the dealer was not fused. Following a trip back to the dealer who took a second to point out the fuse, we had to drive back to the NCT station where we pointed this out and it passed. No apology, and it really dented our confidence in the standard of the personnel they employ.
I honestly don’t get why is200 make made money
@Paul O Meara: it’s this generation’s twin cam. Do you not love the rings lad?
@Paul O Meara:
Rear wheel drive
@Paul O Meara: 21st century equivalent of the Levin
@Paul O Meara: all jap cars are scary money now same with Silvias and skylines could buy them for under 10 grand before now there making over 30
If yer man Coghlan wants SUVs taxed higher due to emissions, he needs to get his facts together. Just because it’s an SUV doesn’t mean it pollutes more. I had a 2012 Corolla which did about 6 or 7L per 100km in diesel. Since moving to a 2017 Renault Kadjar, I’m getting 4.6L on average. Far more efficient.
@Jack: What is the definition of an SUV? The Kadjar, Qashqai and Kuga, for example, are just standard road cars with no off-road capabilities and should not be included under this new directive. On the other hand, the likes of the Toyota Landcruiser, Land Rover Discovery, Ford Ranger and VW Amarok are genuine sport utility vehicles with much bigger and more polluting engines. Maybe we should ban these from our cities altogether. Is this Coghlan fellah a Green?
As with a lot of things in Ireland it’s another farce. I have heard dozens of stories of people failing in one centre and passing in another, or fixing nothing and getting passed on the re-test anyway. I rang to cancel a test i could not attend 6 days before the test and they refused to refund as I had not given enough notice, they thought I would just roll over and lose the E50 but I pushed back and as per their own rules they refunded me but why the fight for it? It wouldn’t be because money is all that’s important to them and vehicle safety is just the stick they use to extract the money from you. I don’t trust them and that’s a legacy of their nasty underhand tactics over the years and they may never shake that terrible reputation.
Currently in the bigger cities around Ireland if you go to book a test today you will be lucky to get one by the end of January or early February. That’s a 6 months backlog on a yearly test schedule?! Farce.
well I have a Toyota C-HR that was passed, but the inspecting “mechanic” made it unroadworthy during the test (and still passed it!) – he decided to test the electronic parking brake by driving it along the road, and switching the parking brake on while moving! This deactivated the brake, and left me with a warning light advising me I needed to take it immediately to the dealer to be rectified…. the “mechanic” told me that this was “a coincidence” and nothing to do with him. It cost me €50 to get it reset. The Toyota main dealer was astonished that this method was used, and that it had not been tested on the rolling road. Applus testing insist it was nothing to do with the way it was tested – who to believe? Toyota who built the bl**dy car, or some chancer at the NCT centre..?
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