www.jec.org.uk

From time to time the subject of the number of XJSs that are still out there comes up. I must admit I've never understood this particular obsession, but each to his own.

Well, VOSA has now released statistics on its website to show how many vehicles of each type passed and failed their MOT. Initially the figures for 2007 are released but 2008 and 2009 will follow shortly.

VOSA didn't do this out of a sense of public duty and spent two years obstructing the Freedom of Information request which came from the BBC. But for once the information commissioner has struck a blow against a government agency.

The nice chaps at the beeb have converted the VOSA pdf into a spreadsheet which can be seen here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/ ... p_2007.xls

The original VOSA document is in a fairly unusable form on their website:
http://www.vosa.gov.uk/vosa/repository/ ... p_2007.pdf

My reading of the figures is that 9166 XJSs were presented for test and 2973 failed.

It's not possible to say what failure(s) were most common because the list includes advisories, but brakes, lights and suspension seem to be most numerous.

Al,

Thanks for finding this and making us aware of it. I found the figures interesting just for the fascination of seeing how few there are on the road of some of the previous types of cars I've owned.

However, there are clearly some huge anomalies in the statistics, even allowing for factors such as cars being imported from overseas. Some of the XJS stats don't look right with XJS & "XJS-C" being confused (I think it's reporting 8166 cars presented, rather than 9166). The Daimler V8 figures look very strange. I couldn't find any Triumph TR sportscars, apart from some TR7s, but I could find 6 Yamaha, 1 Harley-Davidson & 1 Ducati motorbikes! And there seem to a significant of car models that aren't represented at all.

I suspect that the problems lie with VOSA statisticians, MOT Testers not knowing what car they are dealing with, and owners not knowing what car they've got!

I wonder if the 2008 /2009 figures will get any better?

Paul

You're right, Paul, my mistake!

8166 isn't a lot is it?

And I'd love to know what a 1959 XJS-C looks like, and a 2003 one? And why the 3 late model ones had 100% failure rate?

I wonder if the brake failures are mostly handbrake related? On the other hand, bodywork failures seem very low, have most of the rotters gone, do you think?

And I'd love to know what a 1959 XJS-C looks like, and a 2003 one? And why the 3 late model ones had 100% failure rate?

Very interesting stuff!

I wonder if the 1959 one was a private plate that confused the MoT tester or database....?

Hi..yes a lot will be down to misinformation on MOT certs.

My main car is an XJR and it's listed as an XJ8 on the last MOT cert. With XJS's, there seems to be a lot that are mis-listed as XJ's.

SBB