Whether it is a car or a pickup truck, vehicles usually have to go through inspection programs to ensure they are safe to use on the road. While this varies from state to state in America, UK drivers have to send their car through an MOT every year, so it can run on the road for another 12 months.
Cars can, of course, fail these, and sometimes they will have to go back in order to be retested. These tests can sometimes throw up interesting results, as shown by a Reddit user on the r/carTalkUK SubReddit after one owner posted their MOT status.
The poster, Los-Skeletos, stated that they had taken the car in for a service in July 2026, but it had initially failed. The car had gone in for its service just after their partner clipped a kerb, damaging one of the tires and taking a chunk out of it.
Due to the state of the tires, the car had initially failed its MOT. However, later in the same day, the car suddenly passed the MOT. The Reddit user noticed that the garage had changed something on the car just after the failure, and wondered if they had perhaps been a bit cheeky.
Why Did the UK Driver Say the Garage Had Been Cheeky?
Is this fair play or just a bit cheeky?
by
u/Los-Skeletos in
CarTalkUK
With the MOT just a few days away, the owner decided to book it in for both a tire change and an MOT, to kill two birds with one stone. The owner had requested the tire change be carried out before the MOT, so the car wouldn’t fail. The owner didn’t want a failure recorded on the vehicle’s record.
This is when they thought things got cheeky by the garage. “I’ve just been to collect it and seen they initially failed it and then re-tested it with the new tyres on and passed it,” they said on the Reddit post. Rather than change the tires, then do the MOT, the garage had done the MOT first, failed the car, and then decided to change the tires.
This frustrated the owner. They had asked to have the tires changed first, as sure enough, it had failed the MOT due to the damaged tire. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, and the car now has an MOT and new tyres as I paid for. It just seems cheeky to me, or is this reasonable?” added the owner. As with nearly everything on the internet, the topic caused a fair bit of discussion, but mostly in one direction.
This Is What Other Reddit Users Said About the Situation
One Reddit user, Necessary_Spread_511, said that doing the MOT first is standard practice now. This is to ascertain whether there is something major wrong with the car, and if it will cost a lot of money to repair. That way, the original poster would have saved money on the tires and fitting, rather than still having to fork out for them at the same time.
Other users backed this up. User zoomziezoo said, “If other work comes up on MOT, this can all be done at once. Instead of using a bay/ramp and technician’s time twice – once before and once after the MOT. (Generally, most garages will have a different area/technician for the MOT test).” So even though it seemed cheeky, the move to do the MOT first did make some sense.