32 FEATURE Car buying in austerity Britain


Making your new car add up


We all want to reduce the cost of buying and running a car, especially in these straitened times. Tristan Young shows us the sums we need to do


Unless you’re a banker, you will probably have noticed that the age of austerity is well and truly upon us, with tough economic aconditions rarely out of the headlines. We’ll all have to keep our belts tightened for the foreseeable future, so when it comes to buying your next car, what’s the best way to minimise its impact on your finances? There are numerous criteria to consider before you go anywhere near a showroom,


and these are best broken down into two areas: tax costs and running costs. Fortunately, taxation is based on


hard and fast numbers, so it’s easy to tell which cars are going to cost more than others. The UK government is continuing to promote a green agenda when it comes to transport taxation and, as a result, almost all taxation revolves around a car’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (these are easily found on most car manufacturers’ websites and on


the Vehicle Certification Agency’s site at http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/) Vehicle Excise Duty, which requires you


to put a tax disc in your car’s windscreen, is a simple example of this policy. Now, in addition to the simple annual payment for a tax disc, the government has decided to augment it with a first-year payment, often referred to as a showroom tax. This works in two ways. If you pick


a high CO2 car – currently judged as one emitting more than 165g/km of


driving | April / May 2011


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