Ford has announced a car and van scrappage scheme aimed at improving air quality by allowing drivers — of any brand — to trade in their old vehicles for new Ford cars and commercial vehicles (including the Fiesta and Transit Custom) with significantly lower emissions.

Applicable to any pre-Euro 5 vehicle registered before 31 December 2009, the scheme runs from 1 September to 31 December; it will enable eligible consumers to benefit from a scrappage incentive of between £2,000 and £7,000 on a variety of Ford models.

Andy Barratt, chairman and managing director of Ford of Britain (www.ford.co.uk), said: “Ford shares society’s concerns over air quality. Removing generations of the most polluting vehicles will have the most immediate positive effect on air quality, and this scrappage scheme aims to do just that.

We don’t believe incentivising sales of new cars goes far enough, and we will ensure that all trade-in vehicles are scrapped. Acting together, we can take hundreds of thousands of the dirtiest cars off our roads and out of our cities.

All new Ford EcoBoost petrol and EcoBlue diesel models meet the Euro 6 standard — the toughest vehicle emissions requirements yet.” Data from the SMMT shows that there are about 19.3 million pre-Euro 5 emission-level passenger cars on the UK roads today.

Ford’s medium- to longer-term actions to improve air quality include a plug-in hybrid version of the Transit Custom, due to start trials later this year and planned for commercial introduction in 2019.

This vehicle is part of Ford’s total investment of $4.5 billion in electrified vehicles by 2020.