There are many lifecycle energy analyses of car ownership, but for simplicity, here is a .pdf which is available to everyone:
http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media/files/BatteryElectricVehicleLCA2012-rh-ptd.pdf
Figure 1 gives the lifetime energy costs of a conventional vehicle, a battery electric, and a hybrid.
In Figure 2, they convert it all to CO2 equivalent units.

Note how little the total for a conventional vehicle (CV) would change with or without the energy associated with manufacturing and disposal.

My comments on criteria pollutants is mostly based on many years of experience in this area. But since you have no reason to trust a random person on the internet, here is a reference. It is a little outdated, but this document (Table 2.1) gives recent emissions standards vs. precontrol standards.
http://www.unep.org/transport/pcfv/pdf/publowsulfurpaper.pdf

It is remarkable how much cleaner modern cars are.

__________________
1968 220D, w115, /8, OM615, Automatic transmission.
My 1987 300TD wagon was sold and my 2003 W210 E320 wagon was totaled (sheds tear).

They tried to address the entire life cycle energy use in that first reference above, including manufacturing and disposal.

As as aside, I am not claiming that link is a perfect paper. It is just one that doesn't require a subscription to read. My primary professional interests are energy and emissions from motor vehicles, so sometimes it is hard to find just one paper that supports my understanding, when it is actually based on years of reading many scientific and popular publications on the subject.

Another issue to consider is whether the energy associated with manufacturing a vehicle should be assigned to the first owner or distributed across the entire lifespan of the car. In other words, if you buy a used car at 100,000 (assuming it makes it to 200,000), are you responsible for half of the emissions during the manufacture of that car? That may be nitpicky, but it is worth considering.


And on the subject of assigning "blame" for CO2 emissions...
A friend of mine and I used to have joking arguments about whether it is better (from a CO2 emission perspective) to drive from SF to LA, or to hop on a plane. If you take the total airplane's emissions and divide by the number of passengers, that will be more energy/CO2 per person than if you drive. I had a 33 mpg highway Celica at the time, so this was the car I was thinking about. But he argued that the plane was going to do the flight anyway, so those emissions will happen regardless. He said he is only responsible for the incremental emissions of his small amount of mass added to the plane. So there you have it. Using his rational, flying is infinitely cleaner and I am going to hell for driving in my Celica.

__________________
1968 220D, w115, /8, OM615, Automatic transmission.
My 1987 300TD wagon was sold and my 2003 W210 E320 wagon was totaled (sheds tear).

One last point about CO2 emissions which I wish wasn't true. Because diesel fuel has a higher energy content than gasoline, it also has higher CO2 emissions per gallon. Using rough numbers, gasoline emits about 20 lbs of CO2 per gallon of gasoline. And diesel emits about 22 lbs of CO2 per gallon. So a diesel car needs to get 10% better fuel economy than a gasoline car to simply break even from a CO2 perspective. Most diesels do better than that, but it is just something I wanted to be sure folks were aware of.

__________________
1968 220D, w115, /8, OM615, Automatic transmission.
My 1987 300TD wagon was sold and my 2003 W210 E320 wagon was totaled (sheds tear).

I need to take a remedial environment class. Your explanation focuses on CO2 and I'm thinking about everything else like solvents, lubricants, paint, etc. If it were so simple, how many trees do I need to plant for every thousand miles I drive in an '87 300D vs a Fusion Hybrid? I've driven a 2013 Fusion. I wanted to get out before the car moved an inch. It's a good argument for public transportation.

Sixto
MB-less

Sixto: Now that's just crazy talk- nobody with 17000 posts in DD is going anywhere in any kind Ford. I dont think theyd let you even buy one.

I've figured out that the only thing that could bring my current car down would be a state mandated recall of old cars...

I couldn't tell if this was rhetorical, but on the off-chance you are interested in understanding approximate CO2 emissions associated with various aspects of your day-to-day lifestyle, this website has a decent CO2 emissions calculator:
CoolClimate Carbon Footprint Calculator | CoolClimate Network

You can enter your annual mileage and then check out the "Take Action" tab to see what you could do to offset the emissions from your transportation. There are huge number of assumptions that go into these sorts of calculations, so take some of it with a grain of salt. But the creator of the website (Dan Kammen) has his methodology described in peer-reviewed literature, so it is at least somewhat defensible. It unfortunately doesn't answer the new vs used car question.

I have always focused on CO2 emissions rather than solvent emissions because if society ever decided to address the negative impacts of most solvents, the problem could be addressed "overnight." Stop using a particular chemical, and its effect probably goes away in a relatively short amount of time. CO2 is different because its lifetime in the atmosphere is on the order of 100 years, so emissions we do today will continue to have an impact for over 100 years. Or in other words, even if we could magically stop anthropogenic emissions of CO2 instantly, the climate would continue to warm for around 100 years. For this reason, this issue is of greater urgency/interest to me personally.

__________________
1968 220D, w115, /8, OM615, Automatic transmission.
My 1987 300TD wagon was sold and my 2003 W210 E320 wagon was totaled (sheds tear).

That's funny!