According to research carried out by Clean Green Cars comparing the first nine months of this year with the same period last year, Ford achieved the largest reduction in terms of absolute tonnes of CO₂ saved, with just over 10,000 tonnes saved on an annualised basis - mostly thanks to the more economical new Ka and Fiesta.

In a double success for Ford, the new Ka achieved the highest model improvement. After comparing the CO2 performance of some 180 new cars available in Britain, Clean Green Cars found that the new Ka had achieved an improvement of 18.45% when comparing the first nine months of 2009 with the same period in 2008.

The environmental motoring guide adds that the UK's successful scrappage scheme is helping the industry to meet its European Union CO2 targets.

"The current rate of improvement would enable the car industry to meet the EU target of 130 g/km of CO₂ by 2012," it says.

In the first nine months of this year, average new car CO2 in the UK totalled 150.56 g/km, compared with 159.31g/km for the same period last year, a fall of 5.49%.