Ren Dimmer / March 25 2026

Car adverts. Cruising down a gorgeous stretch of country road in a shiny new car in a muted yet stylish colour. Miraculously not raining. Friends and family fill all five or seven seats. The driver ripples their fingers over the wheel and looks content with themselves, the universe and everything.

They love to capture the joy of driving. Currently I don’t feel that joy.

I bought my first car eight years ago- my beloved 2009 Kia Picanto named Helga.

Maybe naming and getting attached to a machine, a tool we simply use to get around, is weird.

But it’s a machine that becomes part of our lives. For business owners, their transport becomes a silent partner. For those who drive long commutes, their vehicle is reliably “there for them”.

I learned to drive in Helga. In 2020, when work dried up, I was able to get a delivery job because I had her.

It’s a point of pride when people I haven’t seen in a long time ask me: “Do you still have that wee yellow car?” and I proudly say: “Yep, she’s still here!”

Jeremy Clarkson touches on the connection people feel in his interview on Love the Beast (2009).

But every trip to the garage is becoming a nail-biting experience. In a bid to use my head more than my heart, I find myself window-shopping in a very changed car market.

Car Costs

The price of second-hand cars was the first shock. 2020 wasn’t fun for the average person, but British showrooms continue to feel the benefit of this period.

But I wondered whether the same was true for my car’s cousins. I bought Helga for £1500 in 2018. For the fairest comparison, I found nine-year-old Picantos at around 119,000 miles.

A 66.3% and 132.7% increase respectively. According to the Bank of England, costs have generally risen by 31.6% in this time.

Of course factors like service history and condition come into it. But routinely seeing cars over ten years old still listed at upwards of £5000 is also a tough pill to swallow.

For those with a smaller budget, there are still many models available from the 2000s and 2010s.

But to save money in the long run, the year the car was registered becomes really important.

“Road tax” and Fuel Duty

Motorists pay tax in two ways:

1. VED (Vehicle Excise Duty). Taxed on the ownership of the car based on different factors. Many changes.
2. Fuel duty. Tax based on car usage which is added to fuel prices – people who drive more will pay more. Currently around 6p per mile and has not increased since 2011.

It’s all really simple. Until it isn’t at all. Below is a non-exhaustive timeline of VED.

• 1889 – Locomotive duty: £5 per vehicle (£562.85 in 2026).

  1920- Changes to £1 (£39.15) per horsepower which aims to self fund Britain’s road network (The Road Fund).

• 1926-8 – Churchill (Chancellor of the Exchequer) is criticized for “raiding” the Road Fund. His cabinet argues it’s impossible to dedicate one type of tax to one purpose.

  1936 – The Road Fund ends. Despite still being commonly called “road tax”, this is a misnomer.

  1948- Flat rate of £10 (£318.53).

• 1990s- The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommends VED be moved to an emissions-based system.

  1999- Two rates: Engines <1100cc: £100/yr (£194.09) Engines >1100cc: £155/yr (£300.84).

• 2001- VED rate depending on CO2 emissions (g/km), originally categorised in four bands.

  2002- A fifth band of CO2 is added.

  2003- Band six.

• 2006-7 – For cars registered after 23 March 2006: <100g/km at £0, >226g/km at £210/yr (£367.72).

  2009 – Total of 13 bands, prices ranging £0-£455/yr.

• 2017 – First-year VED rates based on CO2 emissions, £0 for 0g/km to £2,000 for 255g/km. All but zero-emission vehicles then move to the standard rate at £140/yr.

  Expensive Car Supplement (ECS) introduced for new cars retailed at >£40,000 at £310/yr (£419.78) payable from the second year onward (on top of the flat rate) for five years before dropping to the flat rate in the seventh year of ownership. This is also payable to second-hand cars bought after April 2017 with an original new list price of >£40,000 (if bought in 5-year ECS period).

• 2025 – All EVs are subject to VED (rate depending on year registered) and ECS.

• 2026 – EVs only pay ECS for list-price >£50,000. Flat-rate VED to rise to £200/yr in April.

Right. How does this help us choose a car?

Take the Ford Mondeo ST-220 3L.

£430/yr VED for the 2003 model and £760/yr for the 2006 model. But these are the same car, both at 249g/km. How?

I told you the registration year is important.

In 2003 there were six bands of tax and the 2003 model would have been in the top one. In 2006, they added a seventh band, which then puts the newer Mondeo into a higher bracket. Even when the whole band system was overhauled in 2009, giving us the thirteen brackets below, this remained the case.

Does the new flat-rate of tax make things fairer? Debatable.

A 2006 4.2L V8 Range Rover costs £760/yr as its emissions are 376g/km. A 2017 5L V8 Range Rover costs £195/yr at 299g/km. This is a saving of £565/yr. This creates a loophole that seems counter-intuitive to pushing people towards more economical cars.

It is understandable that the government got jumpy when they realised how much VED income they would lose to a growing number of exempt EVs, but to go from rewarding people for making better choices for the planet to charging them the same as a hugely polluting car is odd.

There’s not a massive amount of consistency in the rules either. Each change has affected cars from the year of that change onward, as the Mondeos tell us. The government didn’t go back and raise tax for people who already owned the 2003 model, so why go back and tax people who bought their EVs almost a decade ago?

The National Audit Office found that a quarter of EV owners renewed their car tax before April 2025 to delay paying the increased rate.

Fuel duty is also getting a remap. Since EV drivers don’t fuel up, they don’t pay. According to the 2025 Budget, fuel duty is to fall to 50% of current revenue by the 2030s.

From 2028, drivers will have to pay an eVED on an estimated annual millage at a rate of 3p per mile for EVs and 1.5p per mile for hybrids.

Again, this applies to all currently registered EVs, not only those from 2028.

It is understandable why people are angry that the goal posts are being moved. However, with the government pledging £2billion towards road maintenance in the same budget, that money has to come from somewhere.

EVs are generally heavier than their fuel counterparts which causes more wear and tear on the roads. The issue is to create a system in which EV drivers can pay their share without counterbalancing the financial benefits of owning one.

A statement from the Scottish transport secretary’s office reads: “While we have repeatedly called for the UK Government to reform motoring taxation which is no longer fit for purpose, we have always emphasised the need for consultation on a four nations basis.”

The government also feels the new eVED is “likely to place a disproportionate tax burden on drivers in Scotland who drive higher average mileages due to Scotland’s higher proportion of rural and island communities.”

Julia Balczynska and Nithushn Gnanaharan, who work in the motor industry, spoke with me about some of the mixed messaging.

“Incentives aren’t supposed to be permanent, they’re there to get people on board with a specific type of thing and then eventually that thing will become the norm. And cars having tax is the norm.”

What now?

These are only a couple of the big bullet points in the current market.

When I bought Helga, I was looking for cheap insurance, cheap tax and cheap to run and repair. She ticked all three.

Now it seems there are so many more, conflicting boxes to tick. Boxes that get ticked now could very well get unticked later, as EVs have proven.

There doesn’t seem to be one strong direction towards which the entire industry is moving and there doesn’t seem to be room for compromise. There is a divide between people who will tell you that they don’t build cars like they used to and those who feel the future is inevitable.

People can make a bit of a saving now by keeping or buying an older car, but these cars are only getting older and rarer. That workaround will eventually die out.

So what to do?