'Dirty cars dump' Down Under?

Australian authorities fear VW scandal could make Down Under a traget market for more-polluting vehicles Photo / iStock

Fears that car companies might "dump their dirty cars" Down Under have been expressed in Australia, but New Zealanders needn't worry.

Australian experts were worried about car companies sending cars Down Under that were more polluting than other markets allowed after Volkswagen admitted using software that cheated emissions testing, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"Unless we change our regulations now, we'll be a place where other countries can dump their dirty cars," the leader of Australia's Green Party Richard Di Natale said.

New Zealand and Australia's emission standards are lower than standards set in Europe and the United States.

However, chief executive of the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association, David Vinsen, said New Zealanders didn't need to worry.

"It's not about sending dirty cars to New Zealand," he said. "I don't think that's the case at all."

The software would be adjusted and the cars sent here in the same way they normally would, Vinsen said.

"There's standards that everything that comes into the country has to meet," he said.

Those standards were "a bit behind" other countries, he said, but still sufficient.

Tom Ruddenklau of Volkswagen New Zealand said it wasn't likely that Volkswagen would be sending any vehicles meant for a different market to New Zealand.

"I'm not interested in bringing over cars that aren't specific to our market," he said.

Volkswagen makes cars specific to a New Zealand market differently to cars bound for America, Ruddenklau said.

"So, they don't have a big stockpile of cars."

Anna Mortimore, an expert in vehicle-emissions regulation at Australia's Griffith University, told the Wall Street Journal Australian limits were so far behind European and U.S. regulatory benchmarks that the so-called cheat devices used by Volkswagen in some of its diesel models to pass certain European emissions tests might actually be unnecessary.

"We are already the dumping ground for global car manufacturers," Mortimore said.

"Vehicles sold here by manufacturers, including not just VW, are all significantly higher for CO2 than they would be back in their own country."

Meanwhile, Kiwi owners of more than 8800 vehicles caught up in the emission standard cheating scandal hhttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11528378ave been invited to join a class action.