A tax system that claims to be green is quietly punishing drivers for preserving perfectly usable older cars – and the contradictions are impossible to ignore.

There is something deeply, almost comically broken about a system that tells you to consume less, waste less, and think about the planet, while simultaneously financially penalising you for keeping a perfectly usable car on the road. Yet that is precisely where the UK finds itself today. If you own an older car, a modern classic, or even a relatively ordinary early-2000s performance saloon, you may now be paying more in Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) than someone who has just driven out of a showroom in a brand-new supercar costing six figures. That isn’t hyperbole. It’s arithmetic. And it exposes the sheer lack of joined-up thinking in modern motoring policy.