You may think that with a drive to reduce fuel emissions and to save money on fuel consumption, more motorists would be opting for vehicles with smaller engines. However, new figures from the Office of National Statistics suggest that engines are only getting larger.
According to its figures for 2008, the number of licensed vehicles in the UK with an engine capacity in excess of 2,000cc increased from 2.3million in 1999 to 4.0million two years ago. Indeed the number of licensed cars with an engine capacity below 1,000cc has declined by 19 per cent.
Despite the figures, AA President Edmund King was keen to emphasise that bigger is not always worse. He said the increase in cars with an engine capacity of more than 2,000cc is not necessarily a reflection that more people have bought “gas guzzlers” because carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in this category have fallen by around 20 per cent over the same period.
He also said that the figures reflect a migration to diesel executive cars – from just 10 per cent to around 75 per cent; and that diesel cars tend to have a much larger cubic capacity but are usually more fuel efficient.
The figures were released as part of a social trends publication from the Office of National Statistics that also show that transport and travel costs account for 16 per cent of all household expenditure in the UK, which is actually little different from a decade ago.
