There's a run on Middle Eastern grade Mercedes taxis

[TonyJZX]

let me get this right

old cars in Europe get cheap tax and rego.

so old reliable cars that have...

1. diesel (cheap per litre)
2. turbo (fast)
3. auto (lazy)

would be sought after?

that was obviously not the intent of the govt. I imagine

[Ustasa]

I was too ambiguous with the cog swapper bit Tone I meant Manual not auto. For the 10ish weeks I was over there I saw a total of 5 auto’s. Almost every car, including 00’s S class Merc’s, came with a manual (and stump pulling turbo diesel). My favourite was a 99 Audi A8 with 4 litres of turbo diesel grunt under the hood (new A8’s get a 3 litre). Talk about tonka tough.

[itsnotagsr]

let me get this right

old cars in Europe get cheap tax and rego.

so old reliable cars that have...

1. diesel (cheap per litre)
2. turbo (fast)
3. auto (lazy)

would be sought after?

that was obviously not the intent of the govt. I imagine

Yep. The reason is you can usually get a much bigger car than otherwise. A good example is the Volvo 240 wagon. A few of my cousins have them as a second car for their wives/gfs etc. I think they're tax free, plus they usually run LPG, so are cheap to run as well as being massive compared to the usual Fiat Pandas etc that they would otherwise have to run.