Can someone satisfy my curiosity?

Stoke

NWOIHTS wrote: »

Government have just jumped on the bandwagon with the CO2 nonsense - any excuse to tax "choice" of the car you want to drive.

And for anyone singling out older cars they don't really emit that much more harmful gasses (if you consider a colourless, odourless plant fertilizer harmful - CO2 harmful), plus there is a lot less older cars anyway on the road, and us older car owners tend to look after our cars, keep them tuned and hence the very reason they have reached such an age, they are usually maintained well.

Compare that with the 'new car every other year brigade'. consider that the cost of energy to build a new car is about the same or even more than the energy to run it over an average vehicle lifetime. you should be rewarded for keeping your car on the road longer - not vilified as some evil polluter.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car

Also all the emissions controls on a new car - adds weight, strangles the engine causing it to use more fuel, and when they start to go wrong usually the result is an increase in fuel consumption.

I think the most eco-friendly car ever, or at least some sort of award like that was the old land rover. About 75% of all the LR made are still on the road:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/classiccars/7505768/Classic-Land-Rover.html

Something to think about!

I think you've got a very good point, but actually my point was about those cars that aren't considered classics, but are accessible to the poor but are still good on fuel, like mine. Mine does 80MPG, emits fairly low emissions, yet models made before 2001 are more expensive to tax than a 2.0 Audi Quattro race weapon which has poor fuel consumption, poor emissions ratings yet are very accessible to the wealthy.

Fact is, fuel injection with ECU technology has been around for a long time. Most emissions reductions came when cars got features such as fuel injection cutoff, and the ability to monitor fuel based on temperature and oxygen... all of which came 20 + years ago. I would hazard a guess that my car doesn't give off that much (if any) more emissions than the newer model which has a slightly altered engine.

fivetide

Try having a motorbike. A 600cc motor still comes in at £78 despite the tiny engine and emissions. Because it is done purely on engine size.

Hardly an equal footing.

jaydeeuk1

Scrapping VED and adding 5-10 pence per litre would be a massive vote winner. Sure in 10-20 years it may need to change again when more hybrids or leccy vehicle appear, but it will have a much higher benefit. Perhaps have some sort of exemption on the extra tax for HGVs so they don't moan.

Gloomendoom

ReginaII wrote: »

A bit annoying isn't it? Clearly, I know nothing about it but, it doesn't exactly make an incentive for getting rid of your old cars and buying newer.

And rightly so. Manufacturing new cars is not a particularly environmentally friendly process.

iolanthe07

Mine does 80MPG,

That is incredible. Would it be rude to ask what sort of car that is?

Stoke

iolanthe07 wrote: »

Mine does 80MPG,

That is incredible. Would it be rude to ask what sort of car that is?

It's a Volkswagen Lupo SDI. Around town you'll see roughly 55MPG, but 'extra urban' as it's called will easily see you rise well into the 70's. I drive a 36 mile trip to work everyday which is composed of three stretches of 60mph road, with towns in between. The towns are easy enough to get through so there isn't a massive loss from town driving, and the way I drive (following certain hypermiling rules), I tend to get about 80MPG, which stands as my record. Of course, some eco modders have militantly gone all out for MPG and got even higher than that.

All of the diesel Lupo's give incredible MPG. The TDi can give anything up to 65MPG with a bit of a performance too.
The SDI can give up to 80MPG without the performance.
The 3L is the world recording holding MPG car, still in the Guinness Book of World records with 117MPG on a drive through Europe... but finding one is near impossible (only about 5 in this country, although plenty in Germany, Poland and Switzerland).

sinbad182

I laugh every time you pop up on here singing the praises of your death trap, ancient junker of a lupo

jimjames

sinbad182 wrote: »

I laugh every time you pop up on here singing the praises of your death trap, ancient junker of a lupo

I'd say Stoke is the one having the last laugh with a hugely economical car with zero depreciation. Seems like a winner to me!

AdrianC

alastairq wrote: »

......and the above effectively wipes out the zero VED for [soon-to-be] pre-1973 vehicles!

Pre-'73 has been free tax for fifteen years, when they froze the 25-yr rolling cut-off. Last year's budget moved it forward one year to include 1973 cars.

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

Scrapping VED and adding 5-10 pence per litre would be a massive vote winner.

To maintain neutral revenue, it'd need to be about 12p/litre - ignoring the effects of any increase in home-brew diesel etc. When you consider the cost of VED for a truck, and the amounts of fuel they use, it'd MASSIVELY hit the UK haulage industry.

sinbad182 wrote: »

I laugh every time you pop up on here singing the praises of your death trap, ancient junker of a lupo

<chuckle> My nice sensible everyday car's a 150k mile, 1990 Pug 205 that I paid £100 for five years ago - and, despite being petrol, still returns an average 45mpg regular as clockwork. If his Lupo's a "death trap ancient junker", !!!!!! is that?

Richard53

alastairq wrote: »

......and the above effectively wipes out the zero VED for [soon-to-be] pre-1973 vehicles!

Golly, hadn't thought of that!

Perhaps instead of rewarding people for raping the environment with a new car every year, artificially strangled to get through some arbitrary emissions test, they should give the owners of classic vehicles a generous cash rebate, as a reward for conserving the planet's resources.

I don't know the exact figures, but I have also read that more environmental damage is caused by the manufacture of a new car than the operation of the car through its lifetime. In the light of that, the so-called scrappage scheme was sheer environmental vandalism for short-term political gain.