My daughter wants to sell her ageing clio as she’s off to uni. It’s got 3 months MOT Left, worth getting it done before selling? It had no advisories last time plus had new tyres recently. Would a new MOT make it more sellable? Even get a bit more money? I assume I can just do this, don’t have to wait for the old MOT to run out first.

You can do it – you take the risk it will fail in a spectacular way though.

How old is the car and value? Sub 1k I’d sell as is.

It will make it more sellable.

You probably won’t get much more for it.

Yes you can MOT at anytime.

If it’s an old, cheap (sub £1k) car, having 12 months MOT will make it much easier to sell and so you should be able to push for a couple of hundred more from the sale.

An MOT fail though (however little needs doing) is worth little more than scrap.

So make sure it’s going to pass, or only fail on things you can replace quickly and cheaply enough to make it worth doing.

It’s a gamble.

I would sell as it is if it’s got 3 months left. Buyers will be able to see you’re not a dodgy wheeler dealer, especially if you invite them to your home to view it. Might get a little less than if it had 12 months, but not enough to make the potential time hassle and cost worthwhile.

It’s a gamble.

If you do and it passes it’s worth more and more importantly much easier to sell – at the lower end of the market MOTs are all important.

If you do and if fails, I believe it’s the case whereby the existing MOT cert becomes null and void and you’re selling “spares or repair” unless you pay for the work to fix it up. Even if that’s not the case a savvy buyer can check the MOT status online and see what it’s failed on.

I’d personally do it, I doubt you’d let your daughter drive a dangerous car, it can only add to the value and as the next buyer will probably be a young person you’ll be able to sleep at night.

If you think it’ll pass fine, then definitely, one of my rules of “bangernomics”

– Have as long MOT as possible, so even if it fails in 10-11 months you’ve had your £500 quids-worth of motoring out of it.
– Buy a brand and model that you still see a lot of on the road, so you know they are fairly reliable and you can easily get parts from a scrapper.
– Buy something you can service yourself easily

Run it into the ground!

When I took my old Focus for MoT, I asked the assessor what it would sell for – he said £360 now, less £30/month after this, so zero when it needs a new MoT. Which suggests getting a new MoT is worthwhile.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think driving a car which has a current MoT but has has failed a test is necessarily illegal, it depends what it failed on. It’s illegal to drive a car that’s unroadworthy, but if it fails on something like a split CV boot, but the CV itself is still fine, I think it’s legal.

Put it in for an MOT.

If it passes then fine

If it fails just sell it with the old MOT*

🙂

*This is not a serious suggestion

I recently had this. Sold the wife’s old car with 3 months left in it for £700. I wasn’t 100% sure it would pass but seemed mechanically sound so I didn’t bother, I replaced a driveshaft that I knew to be faulty before the sale though. The guy was gonna haggle no matter what price we started at so it would have cost me to do it.

The new MOT replaces the old one so if it fails, you either have to fix or sell as is, which would make it a lot less IMO.

if it fails on something like a split CV boot, but the CV itself is still fine, I think it’s legal

I’m pretty sure a split CV boot is an automatic fail.

Find a little independant garage that isn’t a MOT station but does pre-MOT’s.

They will check the car over and tell you what needs doing before going for the actual MOT. If it needs a lot of work don’t bother.

A 12 month MOT on a cheap car makes a massive difference.

How much is an MOT test in mainland UK?

I’m pretty sure a split CV boot is an automatic fail.

Depends how bad (I’ve had advisories), but the point I was making is that a fail for a split boot doesn’t necessarily make it unroadworthy. A fail on a split boot is because at some point before the next MoT, water will get in and damage the CV – but until that happens, it’s still roadworthy.

The new MOT replaces the old one so if it fails, you either have to fix or sell as is, which would make it a lot less IMO.

The old MOT is valid until it expires.

It’s a requirement that the car meets MOT standard at all times though, so while an MOT fail doesn’t invalidate the old cert, the fault itself makes the car illegal (unless driving to/from test centre or place of repair).