Listening to the radio on wednesday, (budget day) ,I heard the announcment by that master of economics Mr G Brown that road tax for 4 wheel drives was to increase substantially starting the very next day, (terrible thing, jealousy!!)…queue a major panic by me, the road tax for my Range Rover expires at the end of the month, rushed home to find the renewal notice, couldnt find it so grabbed all the documents, got to a post office with 10 minutes to spare and got the new disc, £170.
Heard on the radio the next day, a fella phoned in to say that his tax for his 4 wheel drive was now going to cost him £210…but that he also ran a 10 tonne curtain sider and the tax for that was LESS!! 
My question being, is this true? I wouldnt have a clue as to how much truck tax is nowadays.(what ever it is im sure its to much)…but surely a car cant pay more tax than a truck!!!..or can it?
Coffeeholic:
It can. At the current plated weight of my truck, 31 tonnes I pay £165 a year.
£165 for a brand new Volvo unit against £215 for my 1998 RR
Maybe I should chop it in for a unit…or cut the back off the RR and put in a fifth wheel!!! 
Cheers for the info Coffee…methinks Mr Brown is pandering to the lentil eating, sandle wearing, tree hugging brigade here.
You work hard to afford the nicer things in life then some ■■■■ lefty politician gets all high and mighty and decides to take it away from you…because HE doesnt agree with you haveing it…outragous, no wonder so many people are leaving the country in record numbers. 
it’s not actually specific to 4x4’s which everyone keeps misquoting.
It’s for cars with larger engines i think the figure is anything over 2 litres. so if you had say a 1.8 freelander it’s less than £200. A 3ltr Merc saloon it’s in the higher band etc
It’s not directly concered with engine size at all, just the level of CO2 emissions Larger cars/engines usually emit more CO2 than smaller cars/engines.
Check yours here smmt.co.uk/co2/co2search.cfm
Then check the band it will be in, here hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget/bu … ress02.cfm
I keep saying this but i’m not sure if you’re all listening, so i’ll shout it!!
LPG!!
Tramper:
It’s not directly concered with engine size at all, just the level of CO2 emissions Larger cars/engines usually emit more CO2 than smaller cars/engines.
Check yours here smmt.co.uk/co2/co2search.cfm
Then check the band it will be in, here hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget/bu … ress02.cfm
Cheers tramper, very useful that…according to the info on those sites the tax will go up a fiver to ONLY £175!!!
£165 for a brand new Volvo unit against £215 for my 1998 RR
£5 - not too much to cry about really! 
marcustandy:
I keep saying this but i’m not sure if you’re all listening, so i’ll shout it!!
LPG!!
The take up rate of LPG Conversion has been so low, due to the perceived expence of the conversion, that of the few stations that began selling it around here, many have given up on it.
My old Dodge pick up runs LPG and it is the only way I could afford to run it, but the rebate on the duty will only last so long before they put that up too, so the cost of the conversion may not be recouped as I had originally bugeted for.
The conversion, a very simple one on a big old yank V8, was £1000.00
Tramper:
The conversion, a very simple one on a big old yank V8, was £1000.00
I’ve got a V8 Land Rover on LPG and paid 1250quid about 4 years ago for the conversion. I’ve had that cost back 3 times over now. The only downside is that due to the dire economy even with a fairly big tank the range on LPG is pretty poor (only about 150 - 160 miles) but as it’s only a weekend toy that doesn’t bother me too much.
Paul
£210 for any car is worth the price when you think that the alternative is 1.0 micra’s etc,who would want to drive one given the choice,
current car is a galaxy 2.3 auto on petrol wich ere indoors drives,also owned 3.0 24v senetor that drank like a fish,but then it was bloody quick when opened up,provided you had a clear mile in front of you,then the MPG was 8-9 but if you snapped the throttle shut computor showed 999.9 if only it did that all the time.
repton:
I’ve got a V8 Land Rover on LPG and paid 1250quid about 4 years ago for the conversion. I’ve had that cost back 3 times over now.
Thats the point, it has taken you 1 year and 3 months to recoupe the conversion cost.
With the rebate on the fuel being reveiwed people are looking at the capital outlay as risky.
Tramper:
Thats the point, it has taken you 1 year and 3 months to recoupe the conversion cost.
With the rebate on the fuel being reveiwed people are looking at the capital outlay as risky.
Yes, that’s true. The counter argument though is that when I had it done 4 years ago people were saying “you’re wasting your time, as soon as it gets popular they’ll ramp the duty up”. Here we are 4 years later and LPG is still half the price of petrol. That said, given that the current plan is to put duty on LPG up by a third in September (as the hm-treasury URL in one of the above posts suggests) I doubt I would be having anything converted now unless it was either stupidly uneconomical (i.e. my Land Rover) or I did silly mileage as it does seem that the days of LPG being so cheap are coming to an end.
Paul
I had my motorhome converted to LPG at a terrific cost of £150…it was done in a day and ran like a dream …ive since sold it and that was a good selling point....however..i now own a mitsubishi shogun..yes a gas guzzler...but...im gonna drive it to bulgaria again…probably next year …and get the conversion done there again…probably about £100…i will phone before hand…the bad thing is …im gonna lose the 2 small seats in the back...but it will be cheap to run....the option is to buy a smaller car ...but i dont like small cars...so if gordon thinks he can outsmart me..tough ■■■■■■■■■■ if he carries on ..ill register it in bulgaria too…so i wont have to worry about tax either…but its a long way to go for an mot…
as mentioned in the previous posts…the cost is around £1000 mark…way too expensive…i may send for the bits and get it done here anyway …and seeing they are normally italien origin…is no different to what you get here anyway …a friend of mine does his own conversion…then takes the vehicle to an approved gas converter…and gets the work certificated…job done eh !
I guess it’s great if you can fill up with the stuff all the time.
Classic case is Sainsbury’s 2you. When they set up they ordered an all Petrol fleet of VW LT’s with LPG conversions.
Trouble was, as someone has already said range on LPG is limited, so you need to refuel more often. However as there arent that many places that sell LPG more often than not you end up running on Petrol a lot of the time before you can refuel with LPG.
Sainsbury’s ended up paying a fortune on fuel bills as they ended up with their fleet mainly using the petrol as there weren’t enough places to fill up with gas. hence they’ve reverted to a Diesel fleet.
I know Dover district council run an LPG fleet, but this works well for them as their vehicles rarely, if ever, leave the district. As there is a station that sells LPG in Dover this isnt a problem as as the whole of DDC’s fleet fill up there it’s worth the PFS selling it.
Only costs me £20 a week to refuel my mini anyway so didnt see much point in looking at LPG
Hmmm the diesel conspiracy springs to mind with all this talk of tax and fuel .
See as the conspiracy goes …
Diesel a while back was way cheaper than petrol and highly regarded as the economy version and petrol cars where bad , very bad …
But then lots of people bought diesel cars and hardly ever visited the petrol station .
The government noticed this and then paid scientists to say diesel was bad very bad so bad that the government had an excuse to raise the duty on diesel higher than petrol , thus recouping the lost pennies that had been stolen from them with everyone turning to diesel .
No secret that owners of diesel engined vehicles visit the garage less than there petrol friends and neighbours .
So now you know why diesel shot up all of a sudden …
