Quote Originally Posted by Curran View Post
....but would it be better to look at petrol again, with a view to residuals etc, in say, 5 years time!
Short answer, I would say yes.

Its said that Archbishop Noonan ignored recommendations from Transport Dept and environmental submissions in the last 2 budgets to shift the taxation balance from just CO2 focused to one looking a range of pollutants. Also, it looks like the next EU Emissions standards will have targets that will be easier to achieve with petrol engines so tax policy will probably need to adapt to encourage that, in the way that CO2 based tax focus shifted buyers to Diesel since 2008.

So, I'd say that there will be a change in attitude towards petrol cars as the focus changes to wider emissions that will help with residual values of cars that meet the most recent EU standards.

If buying secondhand and pre'14 then consider going diesel and taking the chance that they'll keep kicking the can down the road a bit further, that it'll take time for people to adapt to the changes acoming and because the petrol's of that era are likely to be in slightly higher CO2 categories without necessarily being as efficient as might be needed for the likely hybrid emissions (CO2 and other pollutants) based tax that will materialize.