Research by economists at SMMT has revealed a dramatic shift in the new car market, with hundreds of thousands of buyers moving into cars with lower CO₂ emissions. By comparing road tax bands, which are based on tailpipe CO₂, the figures show 60.7 per cent of new cars sold last year fell within the cleanest bands A-D (under 165 g/km) compared with just 43.1 per cent in 2000. 

New car registrations by VED band 2000 v 2006

VED band	CO2 g/km	2000 new cars	Market share %	2006 new cars	Market share %
A	<100 g	80	0	298	0
B	101 - 120	3,519	0.1	109,926	4.7
C	121 - 150	421,158	19.2	747,094	31.9
D	151 - 165	500,494	23.8	567,007	24.2
E	166 - 185	511,220	22.7	398,055	17.0
F	186 - 225	533,759	24.0	346,343	14.8
G	226 +	250,689	11.3	176,141	7.5

'There has been a noticeable shift in the new car market,' commented SMMT chief executive Christopher Macgowan, 'This is partly due to concerns about motoring costs and partly because reducing their climate change impact is important to more buyers. However, we should not underplay significant fuel economy and CO₂ savings from technological advances in new models, including premium brands.'

Recently launched British-built models highlight this improvement. The new MINI Cooper for example, built in Oxford, is 19 per cent better on fuel economy and 16 per cent on CO₂ emissions than its predecessor, Halewood's Land Rover Freelander2 petrol boasts a 10 per cent improvement on fuel consumption and emissions over the model it replaced, while a new range of fuel-efficient diesel models has helped Jaguar cut average tailpipe CO₂ by 31.5 per cent since 1997.