Hot Hatches Facing The Chop?

Could Australia adopt France’s crippling tax on performance cars?

- Andy Enright

France has announced that its already severe emissions-based taxation system will be revised for 2021, with duties more than doubling in certain cases. The result is that combustion-engined hot hatches could prove to be financial non-starters.

The country that spawned greats like the Peugeot 205 GTI and the Renault Clio 182 has seen increases result in a new Megane RS costing its first owner as much as €10,488 in carbon dioxide emissions tax above its €40,700 price tag.

While this might not seem to affect Australia’s market in the short term, it puts a very unambiguous end stop on traditional hot hatch development, and means that new F1 team Alpine will need to commit to ultra-low emission plans.

French cars have traditionally overperformed in their domestic market. Remove that strong local element from the business case and it’s likely that many models wouldn’t stand up purely on export sales.