France has taken another swipe at the performance car, with its already-severe CO2-based taxes in some cases more than doubling for 2021. The increases will result in a new Renault Mégane RS costing its first owner as much as €10,488 in CO2 tax on top of its €40,700 price tag.
These latest increases will most certainly kill off the hot hatch and the wider performance car sector as we know it in France, with the ramifications possibly impacting other key markets within Europe, too. With France essentially shutting its borders to current performance cars, this once strong market will no longer be able to support any business cases set out by manufacturers to produce performance derivatives of more mainstream models if they are powered by petrol alone. In a global market where the cost of sale is scrutinised down to the last penny or cent, making an argument for a high-performance model that needs to be a sales winner and not just a halo car just got harder now France is effectively out of the game.
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