Manufacturer CO2 performance revealed by Jay Nagley

Clean Green Cars has conducted a unique research programme into the CO2 performance of every car manufacturer operating in the UK. We did this by taking the official CO2 output of every model and correlating that figure to its sales in both the first quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2006. That enabled us to come up with an accurate average figure for every manufacturer by reflecting its sales mix: for example a Focus 1.6 Zetec (159 g/km CO2 and 4402 sales) has a much bigger influence on the overall Ford figure for 2007 than the Focus 2.5 ST2 (224 g/km CO2 and 808 sales).

The results might surprise some people: the manufacturer with the lowest average CO2 figure is Fiat, thanks to the large proportion of small cars and diesels that it sells. In joint second place are Peugeot and Citroen, traditionally leaders in diesel technology. In fourth place is Toyota: despite its high profile hybrid Prius, it does not sell enough of them to make a major difference to its corporate average.