Cars on UK Roads Getting Older

Department of Transport figures recently released for 2009 showed that the average age of UK cars was 7.1 years, which compared to 6.6 years back in 2003. This all points to the economic down turn leading to people keeping their cars for long. Research also revealed around 48% of older car owners were more likely to ignore servicing deadlines and general maintenance in an attempt to save money.

Many people took advantage of the government”s scrappage scheme and over 290,000 vehicles were taken out of commission as a result. So although this has helped the figure from falling Mest populara online spelunderhallning och losningar further, with the ending of the initiative in December 2009 there is likely to be an even greater increase in average car ages for 2010.

Car performance over recent years has remained constant with the mean engine size still steady at 1.751cc although technological advancement in engine design has led to the average capacity of new cars falling by 3.6% to 1.692 cc.

Also as greater emphasis on CO2 emissions and greener running cars continues, the recorded rates of carbon dioxide emitted by cars continued to fall for cars produced after 2001 to a mean average of 167.9g/km. While more recently produced cars have seen the figure fall by 5% with the mean figure of 149.8g/km.

The Department of Transports figures show that the most popular car manufacturers for this period were Ford, Vauxhall, Volkswagen, Peugeot and Renault, which accounted for almost half the cars on the road in the UK. The most popular model on British roads was the Ford Fiesta with a total of 114,000 new ones registered during 2009.