MOT advisories: should you buy the car?

Yes, you can buy a car with advisories on its MOT, and you almost always will. Advisories are the tester's notes about things that were not bad enough to fail the car but are worth keeping an eye on. A three-year-old family car with none at all is rarer than one with a handful. So the question is never whether a car has advisories. It is which ones, and whether the same one keeps coming back.

What an advisory actually is

When a car goes through its MOT, the tester sorts what they find into a few bands. A dangerous or major fault fails it. A minor fault is written down but still passes. An advisory sits just below that: not a defect yet, but on its way to becoming one. A tyre with a little life left, a shock absorber starting to weep, surface rust on the exhaust. The car passed, it holds a valid certificate, and it is legal to drive. The advisory is a heads-up, not a black mark.

The advisories that are nothing

Plenty of advisories are the motoring equivalent of a chipped mug. A blown bulb, tired wiper blades, a tyre near the limit, light surface rust on the discs of a car that has sat still for a fortnight. On their own they cost a few pounds and tell you nothing worse than that the car has been used. If the seller has receipts showing the basics have been kept up, treat them as what they are: ordinary wear you fix on a Saturday or take off the asking price.

The advisories that are a bill waiting for you

Others are the start of an expensive afternoon. Corrosion at the sills, subframe or jacking points, not the cosmetic rust on an exhaust hanger. Oil or coolant leaks that keep being noted. Worn suspension bushes and top mounts, cheap in parts and dear in labour. Anything electrical that comes and goes, because tracing an intermittent fault eats more in diagnostic time than the part ever costs. When you see these, get a written quote before you buy, not after.

The pattern that matters most

Read the whole MOT history, not just the latest test, and watch for the same advisory turning up year after year. The same corroded sill flagged three MOTs running is not a car that needs a wiper blade. It is a car whose owner has been told about a problem three times and left it. A fault that keeps being noted and never fixed is the most reliable warning the MOT record gives you. An advisory that quietly disappears with no repair receipt to explain it is worth a question too: either it was fixed, in which case there is paperwork, or it was intermittent and it will be back.

How to use them

Start with the record. A free vehicle check pulls the full MOT history and groups the faults that recur, so a five-minute read tells you whether an advisory is a one-off or a habit before you have driven anywhere. Then look over the car with the list in hand: the tyres, the underside, the warning lights on the dash after you turn the key. Ask the seller for invoices that match anything they say has been sorted. A tidy answer with a matching receipt is reassuring. A shrug is either a price reduction or a reason to keep looking.

None of this is a reason to walk away from every advisory. It is a reason to buy with your eyes open. For what the rest of the MOT record can and cannot tell you, read our guide to reading an MOT history; for the order to run your checks in, see our guide to checking a used car before you buy.