A 91-year-old Chrysler Plymouth was the oldest car to pass its NCT last year.
The vintage model, which was first registered in 1929, replaced a 1932 Rolls Royce as the oldest vehicle to be submitted for a NCT in recent years.
The Plymouth, which is likely to have been recently imported or restored, failed its initial NCT when it was first tested in 2019.
Figures published by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) show just over one million cars were tested last year – an annual decrease of 28 per cent.
Almost 384,000 fewer vehicles were submitted for testing during 2020 as NCT test centres were closed between the end of March and early June due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The overall pass rate for the 1,06,983 cars on the initial test was 43.7 per cent, considerably lower than the rate of 50 per cent in 2019.
A spokeswoman for Applus +, which carries out the NCT on behalf of the RSA, said last year’s statistics were skewed by problems encountered with lifting equipment at NCT test centres, which meant checks on a vehicle’s body and suspension could not be carried out for a period.
When the first quarter of last year, which covered the period relating to incomplete tests, is excluded, the overall pass rate for the year was 53 per cent.
Figures for 2020 show a wide variation in results between the 47 test centres with the 60.8 per cent pass rate in Ballinasloe, Co Galway more than twice the level of Cavan, the centre with the lowest pass rate of 28 per cent.
The make of the vehicle with the highest pass rate was Dacia – with an average rate of 53.7 per cent. Other makes with high pass rates included Lexus (51.0 per cent ), Hyundai and Skoda (both 50.2 per cent ) and BMW (48.1 per cent).
