London congestion charges

I see Porsche plans to challenge the scheme to introduce a top-line charge of £25 for the most polluting vehicles entering London (see here). I then stumbled on a related news story here which talks about family cars being gas guzzlers and isn't it a shock? Er, no - every single "family car" mentioned has an engine size of well over 2 litres, including the Volkswagen Golf model mentioned (a whopping 3.2 litres). That's strange, because my Golf - dating from 1999 - has an engine size of 1.4 litres and would no doubt escape such a charge should I be stupid enough to choose to drive into central London instead of using the excellent public transport links between here and London.

There's no surprises here - if your car has an engine size of over two litres, you're going to get stung, and rightly so. The most powerful car I've ever owned is this Golf at 1.4 litres, and I've never had any problems with its acceleration (in fact, I never had any problems with the acceleration on my first car, a 1.1-litre Ford Fiesta). Of course there are those who genuinely need powerful 2-litre plus cars, but to drive into the middle of a metropolis? I think not.