I always take announcements by the Association of British Drivers (ABD) with a few heaping teaspoons of NaCL. After all, the ABD is the group that said teaching kids about climate control harks back to Nazi methds not too long ago, and they're not exactly at the forefront of green driving advocacy.

With that in mind, let's see what they have to say about "Britain's Most Unfair and Absurd Tax Proposal." The Association's release is after the jump if you want to read it how they wrote it, but here's the gist.

Thanks to what the ABD calls "clever German engineering," BMW's large X5, an "Urban 4x4," will not have to pay the £25-a-day Band G "gas guzzler" congestion charge in London. ABD says that letting this £40,000 behemoth into London for 80p a day is wrong. The X5 emits between 231 and 299 gm of CO2 per kilometer, and Band G is supposed to hit any vehicles that spit out more than 225 g/km.

What ABD forgets to make clear is why the X5 will be exempt. Plus, the ABD's problem is not that the X5 will skirt by the charge, but that the charge exists at all, that it's "completely unreasonable." I'd like to know more about why the X5 will be exempted, as the news reports I can find about this issue still place the X5 in the Band G category. As for the "completely unreasonable" accusation, that's rich coming from the ABD.

Related:

• BMW X6 hybrid

[Source: ABD]