Problem was they made an emissions target and incentivised it and by 2017 most new cars will meet it resulting in a los of income for the governement so they need to rearrange it and they cant be seen to tax poor people (many of whom still seem to manage to own new cars, go figure) hence the new system.

Likewise, the 25 year tax free thing was fine when it was introduced and we were talking about 1970 cars which have been looked after and are used for shows and stuff, but now 25 years old is 1991, which means its not a few very old but well maintained cars, its a huge number of old cheap smokers and they want to incentivise keeping our car history alive, museum style, not drive up the price of old smokers for students to run about in.