Where did you see that? Seems odd that the rating on the car has actually gone up this year but it is charged the tax. I do know that the rating system has some bizarre stuff that goes on - the rating on the window sticker is not always the rating that is used for CAFE purposes.
BTW, if you want to see how screwed up the government is in this regard, do a little studying of why so many big SUV's and pickup trucks have those "FlexFuels" emblems on them. You'd be surprised what their true CAFE rating is.
I was building a 2013 550i today on the BMWNA web site and I noticed that the gas guzzler tax was not being applied. Once I got to options, I clicked on the 6MT and the gas guzzler tax of $1,000 suddenly appeared. I believe the last time I "built" a 550 the $1,000 was applied from the get go. Has anybody else noticed this?
It would not surprise me a bit. I have not looked up the manuals fuel economy rating. That would tell the whole story. Eight speeds and the ability for the manufacturer to program the shift points makes automatics more fuel efficient than manuals. The days of 3 and 4 speed automatics is long gone, hence the reversal of which get better gas mileage.
I also noticed the tax added to the 550i build for manual trans. on BMWUSA but on BMWConfig the tax is listed as an item but no dollar amount is added.
Is this a tax that is really assessed when the car is purchased?
Autos can also be programmed to beat the system. Since the program to determine fuel economy is well known, maunfacturers will program their transmissions for max fuel economy in this type of driving. Hence some of the strange drivability issues we see....
I didn't notice the gas guzzler tax until I was signing papers. At that time (at least), it only applied to 6MT.
Well worth the price.
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