MORE than 70 untaxed vehicles - including a Porsche 924 and a Mercedes convertible - have been taken off the streets of a North-East town during the first seven days of a clampdown.

Owners are now being offered a choice of paying up or seeing their cars crushed.

Operation Cubit will run in the Cleveland area for several weeks and officers are hopeful scores more vehicles will be taken off the roads.

PC Colin Whitfield, of Middlesbrough community safety department, said untaxed and unregistered vehicles were often abandoned, vandalised and burned out but some also formed a transport pool for criminals.

In Cleveland alone it is thought there are about 13,000 untaxed cars and vans, which cost the Government £1.6m in lost revenue every year.

PC Whitfield said: "We have taken 73 vehicles from the streets in Middlesbrough and the owners have the choice of paying up or having their cars crushed. They are stored in a secured compound in South Bank until their fate is decided. The vehicles we have seized range from luxury motors to complete wrecks being worked on in the street, decent runabouts and criminal community vehicles."

The Mercedes was quickly claimed back. It had been parked outside a garage where it had been booked in to have an exhaust fixed.

PC Whitfield said: "The owner was very upset when the vehicle was taken away and he was keen to pay to get it back.

"But I was surprised at how many untaxed vehicles there are out there. We have received very positive comments.

"The public pay their car tax and they don't see why others should get away with it. They don't like their streets littered with untaxed wrecks and they don't like watching criminals driving around in untaxed, uninsured and untested cars."