Is It Deliberate Policy to Confuse Us?

 I've been thinking of late about Government policy and how it seems to be deliberately obtuse and confusing.

I'm looking at buying another car after my latest steed blew it's head gasket last weekend after a trip to London. I've waxed lyrical before about the reliability of cars, but since 2010 there seems to have been a steady decline as manufacturers attempted to build ever more complex cars for the same or less money. Especially in the small or fleet car market, cars seem to be made to last long enough to get through the warranty or lease period and who cares about any future owners outside that. 

It also struck me whilst looking at a replacement regarding government policy on vehicles that it's pretty insane. 

I'm talking about the Vehicle Excise Duty System and Ultra Low Emission Zone Pricing.

So, let's start. I want a cheap to run vehicle. Road Tax (VED) policy is slanted towards Diesel cars. Diesels attract lower VED and so are cheaper to run on a daily basis. Great you may think, but hang on: ULEZ policy is against Diesels and prefers petrol engine cars. 

So what the government is saying through policy is that one engine is good for the global environment, but bad for the local environment? 

Or to put is another way, the government are just out to fleece the driver any which way they can. Buy a Diesel or a Petrol engine car, the government (local or national) will take their particular pound of flesh from you.

But it's not only the confusing policy over emissions that is in the mix when it comes to buying a car. For instance to meet emissions targets, diesel engines are incredibly complex. They push fuel to pressures found only at the deepest oceans. There's an incredible amount of stress involved in the high-pressure fuel system of a common-rail diesel engine. At any time a component can fail. With the pressures used contributing to the expense of the item required to fix the fault. 

High-pressure diesel pumps are less tolerant of low quality fuel. Euro-6 standard diesels, the cleanest on the market currently, require low-sulphur diesel in order to reduce emissions, but that sulphur was part of the lubrication of the pump on the older engines. So either the pumps have to be made of harder materials, or they fail more regularly.

Not only that, the Diesel Particulate filters used on modern diesels clog up if you don't give the car a blast down the motorway every so often. They also require a solution of urea injected into the exhaust to reduce Nitrogen Dioxide emissions, commonly known as adblue.  Except on some diesel cars that additive is a dealer-only replacement.

Imaging going to a car dealership every time you wanted to top up the washer fluid or fuel. It's that stupid a design decision to make adblue a dealer-only replacement.

Anyway, I've digressed. Again.

The thing is, petrol vehicles attract higher VED but get away with entering ULE Zones without penalties. Diesels pay lower VED but get stung when entering ULE Zones and they are also more complicated and expensive to repair engine faults. 

So what do I do? I'm thinking that petrol may be the best option, because it's cheaper to repair. Diesel is cheaper to tax and I don't travel into ULE Zones on a regular basis. But the eye-watering cost of repairs to diesel engines and the regularity of failure is keeping me away.

Saying that, my petrol Astra only lasted 5 months and a buttload of bills before finally expiring.

Dilemmas!

As it is, for reliability I'm going to stick with what I know: Japanese or Swedish. That's a definite decision.

Another one is a manual gearbox. Even though I have a preference for a lazy automatic gearbox, most post-2010 small cars have either Constant-Velocity Transmission, Dual-clutch transmission or semi-automatic gearboxes. All three varieties of gearboxes have weaknesses. The duel-clutch and semi-auto gearboxes (where a computer shifts a manual gearbox for you) were relatively new around the time of the used cars I'm looking at.

Annnd, there were poorly implemented. The Ford Powershift gearbox being a particularly bad example, but the Volkswagen-Audi group also had a number of DSG gearbox failures.

So much so, there are a liability in a used car with no warranty to speak of.

So, a petrol with manual gearbox it is. Definitely Japanese or Swedish. Something with load-lugging capacity. I've just done the small hatchback thing and it doesn't fit my lifestyle with 11 grandkids and a mother 300 miles away. 

Which removes about 95% of the used cars available for sale in my price bracket. Fun Times!