"tim" wrote in message
...

"Andrew P Smith" wrote in message
...
In article m, Martin
Underwood writes

Unfortunately it's only cheaper for newer cars. I think the cutoff was
2000
or 2001 - certainly slighter more recent that the age of my car (Sep
1999).
Which means that although my car has an economical diesel engine that
does
50 mpg with a correspondingly low level of CO2, I get taxed at the same
rate
as if my car were a petrol-engined car in the most polluting band.
Still,
it's only £40/year - not enough to rant and rave about. Sad though that
the
DVLC couldn't do the job properly and make the scheme apply to *all*
cars,
using the manufacturers' published fuel economy and CO2 figures.


Didn't realise there was a cut off date.

The new emission based rules are only valid for new cars after a certain
date (older cars are rated by engine size IIRC)

Exactly - and the engine size thing discriminates against diesels which tend
to have larger engines without being more polluting. In terms of fuel
economy (and therefore presumably C02 emission), a 2-litre diesel can be
equivalent to a 1-litre petrol. And I know which I'd rather drive! (I
borrowed a 1.1 petrol Peugeot 106 the other day while my car was being
serviced [£980 for 72k service and new clutch - aargh!] and it was
horrendous: although its engine was quite nippy when the car was going
slowly, the poor thing ran out of puff at about 50 mph and had no 50-70
acceleration which made it a liability for overtaking on the dual
carriageway. It also was very sensitive to the slightest change of
accelerator pressure at high speed. And it felt as if it needed another two
gears - the engine was screaming away at nearly 4000 rpm at 70. And I'd
forgotten just how much benefit power steering is when you're manoevring in
a tight space!)