Petrol and diesel models registered before December 2009 can be handed into Ford in return for discounts on new cars and vans.
Unlike schemes launched by BMW and Mercedes, which are only for diesels, Ford will also accept petrol cars and guarantee that the dirty vehicle will be scrapped so that it will not find its way back onto the road.
ClientEarth lawyer Anna Heslop said: “It seems the motor industry is finally waking up to the damage dirty diesels are doing to our lungs as well as their own reputation.
“What we need is a thought-through, coherent strategy from the Government to help people to move to cleaner and more sustainable technology.
“At the moment, there are pockets of small, short-term actions here and there, but nothing like the joined-up thinking we need to solve this problem.”
Consumers will be given £2,000 off new Ford models ranging in price from around £12,000 to more than £20,000.
Ford said by combining the scrappage incentive with other standard offers, customers could receive up to £4,000 off a car or £7,000 off the cost of a van.
Andy Barratt, chairman and managing director of Ford of Britain, said: “Ford shares society’s concerns over air quality.
“Removing generations of the most polluting vehicles will have the most immediate positive effect on air quality, and this Ford scrappage scheme aims to do just that.
“We don’t believe incentivising sales of new cars go far enough and we will ensure that all trade-in vehicles are scrapped.”
Ford said scrappage schemes could take hundreds of thousands of the dirtiest vehicles off the roads, to replace them with models using the latest Euro VI standard engines emitting 80 per cent to 90 per cent less polluting nitrogen oxides and particulates.
David Bailey, professor of industrial strategy at Aston University, told The Guardian: “People are worried about the residual values of their diesels; some analysts think the share of the diesel market could be as low as 15 per cent by 2025.
“There’s a sense that we’ve had peak diesel – it was a wrong turn. Car companies are going to have to take action.
“UK sales have been down in the last few months, partly as the market was overtrading before, with a lot of financial innovation around [car loans] – and now, of course, there is an effect from Brexit, both from currency depreciation and an impact on real incomes.”
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