that is pretty ridiculous.. another decision made by people from behind the desk, that have absolutely no clue about the way the things actually work... (as most of the decisions with motor vehicles..)

In Belgium there aren't many old cars actually.
Much less than in France for example. Mostly because the technical inspection (or how it is called) is much more strict.
I'll try to pay attention and count how many pre-92 cars I see, there won't be many.

Edit: Actually I posted the link to the Excel stats in first page
In 2005, there were about 381 000 pre-1990 cars (i.e. more than 15 years old) out of the 4 861 000 cars on the road. Half of the cars on the road in Belgium are not more than 5 years old.

Where I live I don't see very many cars older than 1990. In fact now vehicles with the 2001-onwards new style numberplates seem to be in the majority.

Well depending on which car but its true you can get newer cars cheaper but anyway, at least in Spain there are lots of cars from the eighties and early nineties left yet, if this was done it would be a problem.

I've just done an Auto Trader search for cars available in my area for under £500 (664 Euros), which is the "dirt cheap" bracket for UK cars, I've stuck to private adverts rather trade adverts. In fact most of them are newer than 1992. Some of them are as recent as 1998. Even as low as £200 or under you can find plenty of cars newer than 1992. That was my point, many 10-15-year-old cars have gotten about cheap as you can realistically expect. Yes they've got all milages well in excess of 100K, and some of them don't have MOTs (and may need a bit of fixing) but you get what you pay for.

However I've got no idea what cars cost in other European countries.

I don't really agree with what the Dutch government is trying to do, but I don't think it'll financially prohibit anyone from owning a car apart from those who couldn't afford to in the first place, they've probably considered that issue.

I agree with you in what you said right inmediately after me, but this last paragraph is once again one of your reasons why you hate SUVs and not why is unfair for pre 1992 cars to be banned to the city centre of a certain city, please, and really i dont want you to feel offended by me but i think wether you think they should be used for one thing or another is not the main subject now really.

Anyway, luxury SUVs are always owned by people with money so the fact that taxes will rise up wont make them decrease i dont think, for the smallest on the maket like Vitaras etc it may decrease, what is really unfair as i pointed out upper is the fact that old cars are banned, just totally unfair, how many people are out there that cant afford owning a brand new nor even a second hand vehicles and they have to buy something really old ans used, being more than ten years old? i think a lot, there are also many teenagers or just young people in their twenties owning these old cars because they cant get a better thing or they just dont need anything better, so why should they feel forced to buy a new car if they dont need one? this turns into a thing of the goverment like they have been doing in Spain for ten years (with a thing called Plan Prever in where when you were going to buy a car you'd recieved money if you gave the old one), if they want less old cars on the road so they dont pollute i think they should help people or something, they'll realise it's a good thing and then theyll probably be able to afford a less-polluting vehicle, but you have to give people facilities and not just deciding something like these, which sounds stupid, and lets not mention what GMANN says about "important" or "well known" "classic" cars, you can remove from the roads the old "diary-use" vehicles but the jewels...

Not impossible it's just no one has the balls to do it, people would complain that their freedom of choice was being violated. Personally I sometimes think large 4x4s should require permits like the gun control system in Britain (you have to prove that you would actually have geniune use for one), and then SUVs would go back to being a market niche instead of an increasing alternative to normal cars.

But perhaps what the government (the British government anyway) will try to do is increase taxes on SUVs so in the end people will be put off buying them.

PS. When I say I say "large 4x4" I don't just mean the massive ones, I mean anything bigger than a small 4x4 like the Suzuki Vitara.

Yeah, like a Twingo can pollute more than a Cayenne, depending on how you drive it, but a small car which has a low consumption will generate less dirty things than a big one with high consumption. Even if the new ones are cleaner, there are some things that you can't "clean" and the atoms contained in petrol must go out in a way or another.

I wonder if there are really so many pre-1992 cars in Amsterdam I wonder if that would make really a big difference.

It is probably politically impossible to ban SUVs or other cars with high consumptions, but easy to forbid access to old cars.

I don't think it's fair to ban all pre-1992 cars from entering a city, but 1992 was 15 years ago, ordinary cars depreciate to a cheap price well before that length of time, they won't get much cheaper once they've depreciated to certain price. So if you can't afford to buy something like a 1993 Ford Fiesta you can't really afford a car anyway.

However when they say pre-1992, are they just trying to get rid of worn-out old bangers? What about someone with an 80s Porsche in good condition? I think in Britain they once tried to do this kind of thing to get rid of really old bangers (a car that is completely worn out and falling apart).

Perhaps they do, anyway like all these stuff always "normal class" people lose, because someone with an old car perhaps due to that it cannot afford a newer one, is banned to enter the city centre? then people with money never have problems, since they have new vehicles every recent period, its not fair for a lot of people...