Does the thought of the annual trip to the MOT station fill you with dread? Every car over three years old is required to undergo a yearly MOT inspection, so unless you’re fortunate enough to switch to a new car every couple of years, you’ll know that feeling of waiting to hear if your car has been given a clean bill of health – and if it hasn’t, how much it’s going to cost to put right.
The exception is cars over 40 years old, which are both MOT and tax exempt. If your classic was built or registered over 40 years ago, you can wave goodbye to those nerve-wracking MOT inspections, and if it was built or registered before January 1981, it’s also exempt from vehicle excise duty (road tax) from April 2021, which could represent a saving of up to £270.
Here are five classic cars that become MOT exempt in 2021.
Fiat Panda
Think a Dacia Sandero is basic? It’s got nothing on the original Fiat Panda, which used flat window glass – even for the windscreen – to keep costs down and offered all the luxury of an Albanian prison cell.
But it was a brilliant bit of efficient industrial design by Giorgetto Giugiaro, and as the first cars landed in the UK in May 1981, W- and early X-plate examples become MOT exempt later this year.
DeLorean DMC-12
If you’re lucky enough to own one of the early DeLoreans that left the Dunmurry factory at the beginning of 1981, you can mess with the space-time continuum and dispense with MOT worries as if it was a brand new car.
Audi Quattro
The car that kick-started a revolution in rallying and changed the course of high performance cars forever was launched in 1980 and the first examples arrived in UK showrooms in spring 1981, meaning if you’ve got one of the earliest cars you can wave goodbye to the MOT jitters.
Fiesta XR2
Ford’s first hot hatch was the 1981 XR2, a Mk1 Fiesta fitted with an 84bhp 1.6-litre engine and those iconic pepper pot alloys. Good, original cars are highly desirable, and now worth over £10k.
They didn’t hit showrooms until December 1980, so only the very earliest cars will escape the tyranny of the MOT test in 2021.
Ferrari Mondial
The recent upswing in classic prices means even the awkward-looking, uncool Mondial is worth upwards of £25k these days. And is it just us, or is it looking less awkward and uncool, too?
Though 40-year old classics don’t need MOTs, owners can choose to have their cars tested anyway, and if we were buying something this expensive (and potentially financially ruinous) we’d like to see a current MOT certificate for peace of mind, alongside a solid service history.
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