Like so many car owners I have experienced increasing difficulty achieving the EU fuel efficiency of the various cars that I have owned. I suspect that this is primarily because, as one would expect, the car manufacturers have been learning how to engineer for the official test, driven by the government taxation penalties. Has anyone noticed that the despite the recent improvements in the official efficiency (23 per cent since 2000) the actual fuel economy achieved in the real world, with the latest generation of cars, is as much as 30 per cent below the official figure, potentially leading to the conclusion that real fuel consumption is static or increasing? This is borne out by the entries in the Honest John Real MPG tables. If this is right then the government will dramatically miss the emission targets.