My Y reg fabia classic 2001 is £165 I was amazed too was even more anooying when i found wifes renault laguna 1.8 was £180.

Aye! My wife's 800cc, 50BHP Daewoo Matiz (2002) costs £140 for the year! That's £25 more than my infinitely-more-enjoyable 1.9TDi. It hardly strikes me as the biggest of incentives to plump for that soggy, noisy, fragile, underpowered piece of crap over an option with a little more muscle(!). Grr!

The band G thing is a bit unfair also... What I mean by this is the date it started -23rd March. 22 days after the new registration.

So, you can have a 06 plate S2000 and pay £205 a year if it was registered on 22nd March, or pay £300 a year (band G) if it was registered on the 23rd March. Band G will rise to £400 next year also, widening the gap further.

Ok, some of you might be thinking what is the issue here? Well, the consequence of this is that any car over 225g emissions sold on an 06 plate before 23rd March is going to be a easier to sell, or hold its used value better, than a car purchased after that date because it's cheaper to run (cheaper to tax each year).

I think it would have been more appropriate to start the new band G on the 1st of the month, coinciding with the new registration plate.

Has anybody else noticed the amount of large 4x4 languishing on dealer forecourts recently?