Toyota iQ sports car on the way?

Intriguing rumours brought via Carscoop and Auto Motor und Sport today - that of apparent Toyota plans to show a concept study of a roadster based on the iQ city car at the Tokyo Motor Show around this time next year.


Image: Auto Motor und Sport
Early news indeed, so as of yet it's best to take the information with a pinch of salt, but it's promising nonetheless. The car would be perfectly placed to take up the gap in the market left after the tiny Smart Roadster departed and would prove a competitive rival to the Daihatsu Copen, the only other tiny sports car on the market at the moment.

Like the Copen, the iQ "Spider", as it's likely to be called, would be front-wheel drive, using the 1.0l and 1.3l engines and powertrain of the city car. This also means the car could potentially use the 1.4l diesel pencilled in for the regular iQ.

The regular iQ is due on sale January 2009 from around £10,000.


Image: ©Tarmac 2008

RAC: Scrap cars over 18 years old?

For a body that is often found fighting for the rights of the motorist and the car itself, the RAC's subsiduary, the RAC Foundation, has just released a confusing report suggesting that cars older than 18 years should be be scrapped in an attempt to "clean up" the roads. 18 years ago was the general time that the majority of cars started being fitted with catalytic converters. First impressions seem to suggest that cars older than this, then, are "dirty".

Whilst the RAC is not suggesting by any means that all cars older than this should immediately be destroyed, the report is still worrying, in that a body such as the RAC has a voice that can be heard by the government. The government aren't known for the subtlety by which they execute ideas, so I'm sure I'm not the only petrolhead who has images of a bill being passed through the Commons making all cars made before 1990 illegal.

Much of the RAC's report, available here (.pfd file) makes sense, but they worryingly refer to the scrapping plans increasing demand for new cars. This, in my eyes, has a few problems.

Firstly, the sort of people who own cars this old are either people who consider them classics, and therefore have deliberately bought them instead of buying a newer car, and those who struggle to afford even a car half that age so buy an older car through sheer necessity. Consumers in the first group are likely to be better equipped to keep their cars, under grounds that they're likely to be well-maintained and not too "dirty" anyway. Even if they do end up having to go to the scrapper, they might be in more of a position to afford something newer. Consumers in the second group might not be so lucky. Even with the small financial incentives that will be offered should any sort of scheme go ahead, they may not be able to reasonably afford a newer car. Many of either group might struggle to afford a new car, which is what the scheme is incentivising.

Secondly, the RAC keep referring to pollution as the CO2 figure (a trend echoed by the government). CO2 is directly proportional to fuel efficiency, so a car made in 1990 that does 30mpg will be producing roughly the same CO2 as one that's been made in 2008. The RAC provide figures showing that average CO2 has decreased by 16.4% since 1997, but this is much more indicative of the trend towards diesels than it is the trend for less polluting cars. And diesels produce very different particulates than the petrol engined cars that were more prolific back in 1990 anyway.

If we're to compare like-for-like, a 1990 BMW 318i should do around 35mpg in normal useage (and capable of much more), judging by various owners' reports found around the internet. The model that followed (91-98) did... 35mpg. The following model did a whopping... erm, 35mpg. The latest model (05-) does 38mpg according to official figures. Only the very latest version released this year, thanks to BMW's Efficient Dynamics program, climbs significantly to 47mpg (though it remains to be seen whether this is achievable in day-to-day use). The bottom line is that the CO2 rating will have stayed roughly the same for a good 17 years.


Old: 35mpg; New: only 3mpg better
This brings me onto the third point - that a car that's been well engineered in the first place (like the early 3-series above) and well maintained throughout its life will likely be kinder to the environment than many badly engineered and maintained vehicles half it's age. Not to mention that subsequent users aren't adding to the global carbon footprint by buying used, wheras new buyers are each contributing to the share of CO2 that the production of their car has caused, before the key has even been turned for the first time. Now obviously, it's unrealistic to assume that we should stop buying new cars to cut down on global CO2, but at the same time it's clear that scrapping anything older than 18 years is the answer either.

I'd personally be suggesting that pollution from any age of car could be reduced by additional driver training to enable people to extract the maximum efficiency from their chosen vehicles, but that's another subject for another day.

If you're the owner of an older car in the UK I wouldn't get worried just yet, but don't let that stop you thinking of some good excuses either...