Petrol here is €1.30/ltr (that's about $2.04) but I buy shell v-power that's another 5c/ltr more - I just find the car runs well on that. On top of that the Irish government believes it fair to impose an annual €1,491.00
motor tax if you drive a larger than 3.0 engine. You can pay by 6 months or 3 months but that costs even more (up to €1,684.00/year - $2,636.00). For new car buyers there's the 30% Vehicle Registration Tax imposed on the retail price which is of course in addition to the 21%VAT.
A new E70 X5 4.8 M Sport starts at €120,000 here and when you add the best of the packages and options it can be more than €163,000 ($255,192) inc. VRT/VAT - don't believe me?
check out the BMW Irl car configurator.
I guess the point here is that if the rising costs of motoring are an issue then the X5 is not a sensible choice for your wallet. However, when I fire her up every morning - I can't help but smile and think "
hey, I deserve it!".
From July 2008 the government here is changing the VRT and motor tax calculations to reward buyers of lower
CO emmission cars but penalise buyers of cars with higher CO emmissions. Interestingly, 68% of BMW models will see a
reduction in price here due to
BMW EfficientDynamics. Sadly, the X5 won't be one of them but the 520d SE will drop in price by more than €8,000!
