[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

[Conspiracy theory - start] Governments are on the OEMs' side by introducing laws which favour frequent replacement with brand new models. Other than incentives for big companies, which help bring down the initial up front cost, there are laws about penalties for emissions. Some of these laws do not even check whether your car is presently tuned properly or not, they only limit your access to certain city centers based on the emissions class (eg EURO4, EURO5, EURO6) of your car when it was produced - and this class more or less implies how young your car is. It does not matter how dirty it runs now, or even if you've blocked your EGR and removed the DPF.
So this leads to absurd situations where a properly tuned and perfectly hypermiled EURO3 car would be classified as "polluting" and would be restricted from entering many areas, while a 2024 fuel-guzzling 400hp V8 would be labelled as EURO5 or EURO6 and would have no problems with polluting those areas restricted to others.

It's far from being a conspiracy theory. New (and more expensive) cars are usually an easy source of tax revenue for governments with all those licensing fees, VAT, whatever...