While idling away a little time I came across a late e61 530d (yes, its an SE!) on a website and did a little bit of digging to see what NOX figures looked like and how they'd impact on importing one, to the level of cost publicised a few weeks back, after the budget.

Firstly, there's a distinctly limited array of VRT Calculator options for these now and none that matched the spec of the one I was looking at (e.g. CO2 figures). So, I looked at a saloon instead just to get a ballpark. The saloon disappeared off the calculator sometime in 2018 but one matching a 2009 SE was there today, but the VRT is about double what it would have been if it had been left in the same VRT depreciation category as when it was last seen in 2018, but just got a year older (VRT now €3534).

Secondly, these are EU4 compliant, so even though they have particulate filters, it means a fairly high NOX level (222 mg/km). To put it in context, an EU6 complient F10 530d would have a NOX figure of less than 40 mg/km. With the proposed NOX related element of VRT, the car would attract an additional charge of €4150, if I've done my sums correctly.

That's a pretty hefty hit on the NOX output. That'll kill any market for imports of something like this stone dead (who says that tax policy can't influence decision making?). If they start to take a similar approach with roadtax, any of us wafting about in old smokers will need to break out the lube again......