The Kia Picanto and the Hyundai i10 are about as close as two cars from different badges get. Both come from Hyundai Motor Group, both are small city cars of the same size, and the second-generation versions of each (the Picanto from 2011 to 2017, the i10 from 2013 to 2019) were sold with the same family of 1.0 and 1.25-litre petrol engines.
So you'd expect them to do much the same at the MOT. They don't.
We looked at every MOT test recorded for these two generations in the DVSA's national data: 760,154 tests of the Picanto and 990,477 of the i10, compared at the same mileage. One part stands out above everything else.
Of the Picantos registered from 2014 to 2017, 9.6% have failed an MOT on a front coil spring. Of the i10s registered in the same years, 0.3% have: about 30 times fewer.
The front spring problem, year by year
Here is the share of each car that has failed at least one MOT on a front coil spring, by the year the car was first used:
| First used | Kia Picanto Mk2 | Hyundai i10 Mk2 |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 19.9% (2,804 of 14,097) | – |
| 2013 | 11.3% (1,524 of 13,451) | – |
| 2014 | 6.0% (899 of 14,970) | 0.7% (164 of 23,883) |
| 2015 | 13.7% (1,902 of 13,891) | 0.5% (116 of 22,776) |
| 2016 | 14.0% (1,781 of 12,718) | 0.02% (5 of 22,554) |
| 2017 | 5.1% (686 of 13,439) | 0.01% (3 of 24,062) |
Across all six years of the Picanto, 9,596 of 82,566 cars (11.6%) have failed on a front spring at some point. That's roughly one in nine.
Two things are worth noticing. First, it isn't simply a matter of age: 2014 Picantos have about half the failure rate of the 2013 cars and less than half that of the 2015 cars. Second, i10 front spring failures all but disappear from 2016 onwards, with just 9 cases among the 85,907 cars first used from 2016 to 2019.
A broken coil spring is a major defect under the MOT rules, so it's an automatic fail, and the car can't pass until it's replaced.
MOT by MOT, at the same mileage
Spring failures are the headline, but they aren't the whole story. When we compare the two cars test by test, at the same mileage, the Picanto passes less often in all 12 mileage bands where both have enough tests, by more than a percentage point in 10 of them. The gap grows as the miles build up:
| Mileage at the MOT | Picanto passes | i10 passes |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10,000 miles | 92.2% | 92.3% |
| 20,000–30,000 miles | 82.7% | 83.9% |
| 40,000–50,000 miles | 71.9% | 77.5% |
| 60,000–70,000 miles | 64.2% | 71.6% |
| 80,000–90,000 miles | 58.6% | 66.9% |
| 100,000–125,000 miles | 54.4% | 62.3% |
By 70,000 miles, a Picanto is around 8 percentage points less likely to pass its MOT first time than an i10 with the same mileage.
The Picanto's other weak spots
Comparing the parts that fail, at the same mileage, three things stand out for the Picanto. Each holds in at least 10 of the 12 mileage bands:
- Front coil springs: 1.8% of Picanto MOTs fail on one, against 0.04% of i10 MOTs, over 20 times as often. (This is per test rather than per car, which is why it's lower than the figures above: a car only fails on a broken spring once.)
- Front position lamps (sidelights): 5.7% of MOTs against 1.3%, about 7 times as often.
- Parking brake: 5.4% of MOTs against 2.6%, about twice as often.
It isn't all one way. The i10 fails more often on stop lamps (2.3% of MOTs against 0.63%, about 4 times as often) and on rear brake discs (1.7% against 0.72%, about twice as often), in 8 of the 12 mileage bands.
What this means if you own or are buying one
If you have a second-generation Picanto, especially one first registered in 2012, 2013, 2015 or 2016:
- Have the front springs looked at before the MOT. A garage can spot a cracked or broken coil with the car on a lift. Signs to watch for yourself include a clunk over bumps, or the car sitting lower on one front corner.
- Check the sidelight bulbs before the test. It's the cheapest fail there is to avoid, and on a Picanto it's a common one.
- If you're buying, ask whether the front springs have ever been replaced. The car's MOT history will tell you whether it has already failed on them.
None of this makes the Picanto a bad car. It's still a cheap, economical city car that passes most of its MOTs. But it does mean the Picanto's MOT is more predictable than most, and that's worth knowing before the test, not after it.
You can see the full side-by-side comparison, including every mileage band, on our Kia Picanto Mk2 vs Hyundai i10 Mk2 comparison page, or compare any two models yourself.
How we did this
- Data: the DVSA's MOT history records for every Kia Picanto (second generation, 2011–2017) and Hyundai i10 (second generation, 2013–2019) in our dataset, as of 12 October 2026. It contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
- Per-car figures: a car counts once if any of its MOTs recorded a major, dangerous or failing defect mentioning a front coil spring. Cars are grouped by the year they were first used.
- Per-MOT figures: each MOT counts once, including any retest within 14 days, grouped by the mileage recorded at the test. A mileage band is only compared when both cars have at least 1,000 tests in it, and a part is only listed when the difference is far too large to be chance and holds in at least half of the mileage bands. More on how we compare cars.
- These are differences in real-world MOT results, not engineering verdicts. Owner mix can differ between models, which is why we compare cars at the same mileage.