Dodge, BMW and Volkswagen Golf named as least green machines

Ranked on carbon emissions and noise, the cars were deemed three of the ten most environmentally harmful cars by the ETA

Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 June 2009 17.48 BST

A Dodge sports car, BMW family car and Volkswagen Golf were among the vehicles today named and shamed as the least green cars of the year, according to the Environmental Transport Association.
Ranked on criteria including carbon emissions and noise, the cars were deemed three of the ten most environmentally harmful cars by the ETA, a lobbying charity and breakdown cover-provider with 20,000 members.
The worst offender in the ETA list, the 8-litre Dodge SRT-10 supercar, was found to produce as much CO2 in a typical year's driving as an acre of mature oak forest would absorb in the same period. A Volkswagen Golf (3.2 V6 250 PS R32 4MOTION) was rated as the worst small family car partly because of its high greenhouse gas emissions, and the BMW M3 was considered by the ETA as the worst large family car.
"The big problem is not the Dodge SRT-10s and Lamborghinis because there are not many of them on the road," explains Andrew Davis, director of the ETA. "The concern is that people are continuing to buy cars that are much too big for their real needs." Two weeks ago Lamborghini pledged to cut 35% of CO2 from its cars by 2015.
The ETA's 2009 Green Car Awards also examined more than 1,300 cars to select what it saw as the ten greenest vehicles. The new Honda Insight hybrid won the greenest car of the year award, while Toyota picked up two awards – one for its city car the iQ and one for its supermini, the Yaris. Diesel engines featured heavily in the greenest top 10, and the ETA said that its concerns over the health impact of pollution from diesel tailpipes had been allayed by the development of new particulate filters.
The charity's methodology looked at fuel efficiency, local air pollution including particulates and nitrous oxides, and noise levels when the cars were running.
Last week, What Car? magazine revealed its own green car awards, which looked at both the environmental credentials and the driving experiences of the cars. It featured several different models to ETA's list, including the magazine's greenest car of the year, a diesel Volvo S40. A further publication, the What Green Car website, is planning to announce its own awards of environmentally friendly cars later this month, and has published a shortlist that includes the Honda Insight.