Volkswagen model reference
Volkswagen Up
What our record holds on the Up, sold in the UK 2011 to 2023: body styles, fuel types and the road tax a used one pays.
No reliability figure is published for the Volkswagen Up that this site could cite. What circulates instead is survey data from panels that select themselves, and warranty claim rates published by companies with something to sell.
Any percentage would be our own calculation. Which years count, and whether a facelift and a new generation sharing the Up name are one model or two, both move the answer, and neither choice is anybody official's.
So the field does not exist. We do not average the other Volkswagen models into a number and put it here, and we do not push a marque figure down onto the Up. What is real and specific is the paperwork for one car.
No fault ordering is published for the Up
A 2015 1.0 petrol at about 105 g/km is band B, £20 a year in 2026/27.
That figure is a worked example for the year and engine named, not a rate for every Up. Read the CO2 figure and the first registration date off the V5C before you budget, because both change the answer.
See every band for this tax yearStanding next to one
Buying a used Up: what the record settles
Our record puts the Up's UK sales period at 2011 to 2023. That range is the useful starting point, because everything about the cost of running one turns on where a particular example sits inside it. It came in one body style here, hatchback, with 2 fuel types: petrol and electric.
The Up was on sale on both sides of the road tax change of 1 April 2017, and that is the single most useful thing to know before you buy one. An example first registered up to 31 March 2017 is taxed on its CO2 figure under the lettered bands, so engine, gearbox and even wheel size can move two cars of the same year into different bands. One registered from 1 April 2017 pays the flat standard rate instead and its CO2 stops mattering. Two otherwise identical cars a year apart can cost noticeably different amounts to keep taxed, and only the V5C tells you which one you are looking at.
For running costs the fuel matters more than the badge. An electric one takes the same test minus the emissions section. Everything else is identical, so tyres, brakes, suspension, steering and lighting are inspected exactly as they are on a petrol car.
None of that is a substitute for the record of the actual car. The invoices name what was replaced, when and at what mileage, and the same job appearing twice in three years says more about a Up than any statistic about the model ever could. A mileage that goes backwards across a paperwork trail is worth walking away from whatever the badge is.
Volkswagen has been imported into Britain since the early 1950s and has led new registrations by marque for most of the last decade. The Golf is the marque here: eight generations, a used market that spans everything from £800 Mk4s to nearly new GTIs, and a place in the new car top ten again in 2026. Diesel Golfs and Polos from the 2010s still make up a large share of what changes hands under £5,000. That is context on the marque rather than on this car, and there is more of it, along with every other model line, on the Volkswagen page.