Ford today announced it is offering an extra £2,000 scrappage incentive, on top of customer savings on specific models, in a move to get older vehicles off the road and cut pollution.

Ford today announced a car and van scrappage scheme aimed at improving air quality by enabling customers, of any brand, to trade-in and scrap their old vehicles for new and affordable Ford cars and commercial vehicles with significantly lower emissions.

The scrappage scheme applies to any pre-Euro 5 vehicle, registered by December 31, 2009, and allows eligible consumers to benefit from a scrappage incentive of between £2,000 and £7,000 on a variety of Ford models, including the new hi-tech Fiesta and Transit Custom, Britain's most popular car and van respectively. The Ford scrappage scheme will run to the end of the year and is effective for registrations from September 1 to December 31.

Andy Barratt, chairman and managing director of Ford of Britain, 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 Ford 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 yet. Not only are they cleaner than ever before, but they are also the most efficient, meaning improvements in fuel economy too.

Latest Euro 6 standard4 and new vehicle technologies mean today's cars produce far lower emissions than previous generations:

Carbon monoxide (CO) – petrol down 63%, diesel down 82% since 1993.

Hydrocarbons (HC) – petrol down 50% since 2001.

Oxides of nitrogen (NOX) – down 84% since 2001.

Particulate matter (PM) – diesel down 96% since 1993.

Data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders shows that there are about 19.3 million pre-Euro 5 emission level passenger cars on the UK roads today and reducing that number, through scrappage schemes, would have the effect of reducing CO2 by 15 million tons a year, equivalent to the annual output of approximately three coal-fired power stations5.

Medium to longer-term actions to improve air quality include a plug-in hybrid version of the Ford Transit Custom, due to start trials later this year. The Transit PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) is planned for commercial introduction in 2019 and is part of Ford's total investment of $4.5bn in electrified vehicles by 2020, which also includes a fully electric, long-range sport utility vehicle.

Total scrappage offer savings on new Fords are:

Fiesta – £2,000 scrappage incentive only.

B-Max (excluding Zetec) – £1,500 maximum customer saving plus £2,000 scrappage incentive.

Focus – £2,950 maximum customer saving plus £2,000 scrappage incentive.

C-Max – £2,500 maximum customer saving plus £2,000 scrappage incentive.

Kuga – £2,000 maximum customer saving plus £2,000 scrappage incentive.

Transit Courier – £1,650 maximum customer saving plus £2,000 scrappage incentive.

Transit Connect (excluding Base) – £3,000 maximum customer saving plus £2,000 scrappage incentive.

Transit Custom – £3,500 maximum customer saving plus £2,000 scrappage incentive.

Transit – £5,000 maximum customer saving plus £2,000 scrappage incentive.