The European Commission keeps moving the goalposts for what manufacturers are supposed to achieve - targets that are supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from car exhausts in Europe. When you see a graph of the manufacturers' progress, projected future improvements based on past performance, and how the successive EC targets have moved, it's easy to see that (a) the EC keeps making the targets easier to hit and (b) the makers have never looked like hitting any of them. Korean and Japanese manufacturers have caught up with the Europeans since 1995, but the future trend suggests that no group is making enough progress to achieve a 130g/km fleet average by 2012, which is the level widely tipped to become policy when the EC's current cogitations have concluded. Individual marques may do better, of course - Toyota is currently moving in the right direction, for example, while Suzuki is going backwards, harming the Japanese average.

This aggregate data comes courtesy of environmental lobby group the European Federation of Transport and Environment.