UK car market and tax changes

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
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Fri 10 Aug 2007 14:04
UK car market and tax changes - ukbeefy
I've just been to buy some visitor parking permits at my local authority here in London (Lambeth) and noted that they have brought in variable charges for residents' permits based on CO2 emmissions. Top band is now £200 a year (and I think that is just for starters - how much next year?)

It's got me thinking - the UK market (outside of the company car tax regime and all its various changes over the years) has never been hugely influenced in the past by tax levels in terms of the cars bought (beyond cars that are heavy on fuel being expensive to run).

Now that there are both car tax itself and if required residents permits rated quite exponentially on CO2 emissions can you see the market moving more to what used to happen in France that effectively a car with much more than a 2.0ltr engine was very rare indeed.

Will many more people will be driving the smallest engine in a car with economy oriented features (as French market cars often were - basic spec, skinny tyres and small engines) or even moving down a size in car and having reasonably well off people tootling about in superminis? (as someone else has remarked here about non-snobbish car attitudes in France).

I wonder whether if the tax system moves ever more to penalise CO2 that cars like the Sirion or very tweaked economy models of mid sized cars might become the norm and a big engined small or medium car might be a thing of the past.

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Fri 10 Aug 2007 15:43
UK car market and tax changes - boxsterboy
I think this is already happening. Small car sales are taking more of the market. Medium saloons are dropping and apparently even 4x4s are dropping, although the big drop a while back did seem to coincide with the replacement of Freelander, X5 and CRV all at roughly the same time, rather than a 4x4 backlash.
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Fri 10 Aug 2007 19:16
UK car market and tax changes - ukbeefy
I just wonder if the tax level on car rises past £500 whether it becomes a tipping point and will lead to a dramatic drop in sales? Will people driving Range Rover Sports etc start to take notice or not?

What always surprised me is when the congestion charge was introduced that retailers in some high end locations in London claimed that they were getting few of their rich customers driving in to shop in Marylebone High Street etc. even though in the grand scheme of things £5 was not alot compared either to the customer's car, the parking charges or the cost of whatever they were going to buy eg expensive clothes or food. I wonder if the car tax level went up for such people if they also would react as illogically and ditch the larger/big engined car and drive round in something much smaller (as you see in places like Milan/Rome/Paris where u see many fewer Mercs and alot more Smart cars/Lancia small cars etc.
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