I tend to agree. I also wonder how many of those '£2K' cars were, in fact, undervalued against a true trade-in/cost to change value - I can well imagine Mr & Mrs Don'LikeToHaggle going into the dealership & getting a much worse deal than without the dubious 'scrappage scheme'.

Also, the supposed rationale for the scheme was to boost the economy after the 2007-8 bank failures & expected slump. Well, it didn't happen like that, the real slump is happening now & all that potential spending power has been spent already. All those 'bangers' would also have circulated money amongst garages & motor factors (i.e. need for more repairs/servicing than newer cars, pro rata) & kept out a few more tens of thousands of imports (Hyundia did particularly well, I believe) & put more wages in pockets.

I would post a reply about how it was noted by some news outlets that some manufacturers were inflating prices shortly before the scheme came in, in order to not "lose" that grand when the scheme came in, but if i did, Avant would probably delete it.

So i wont.

And seeing as the only people who could take this up were people who had at least 8k kicking about doing nothing, and hence were able to maintain those cars very well, makes it even more stupid that these well maintained cars were crushed instead of re-sold. Its "green credentials" also falls down as you say the bangers we needed to scrap, still remained, people running those cars out of neccessity dont have 8 grand kicking about to buy a new car.

Welcome to the forum, George.

Yours is a fine example of a good car with plenty of life left in it, many of which went to the crusher under this scheme. Sadly it was a piece of short-term thinking by politicians which wasn't a long-term solution to anything.

Although some sheds were mercifully put off the road, there were far too many that weren't sheds, including some 'classics' which would have fetched more than £2,000 in the market.

Someone told me that the scrappage scheme saw off a large proportion of the surviving leaf-sprung 'series' Land Rovers - the last fo which were built in the early '80's.

Certainly they seem a lot more scarce on the road than they did two or three years ago.

Come to think of it, you don't see many early 90's or 110's about these days. Yet a few years ago very ancient Land Rovers - including Series 1's - were not uncommon.

If they bring in another scrappage scheme, which looks rather unlikely, it should be limited to people who are scrapping large, thirsty cars and replacing them with small, economical ones.

Edited by Sofa Spud on 26/07/2011 at 23:58

Well as i pointed out in that thread about the Mercedes emissions thing that my car doing 5k a year will cause less 'environmental damage' than a Focus TDCi doing 15k. Of course the Focus is the more efficient because in that year it wouldve gone further using less fuel and emitting less co2 per mile, but i think a point many people miss is people who buy cars like the Focus TDCi are people who probably will travel 15k a year or more, and people who buy something like what ive got, generally dont (i'll probably do 5-10k a year in mine) So throughout the cars lifetime and usage, the chances are, the economical little boxes, the Focus, Golf TDI's of this world will pollute more, as they will be used more, but will go alot further for it. So yes they are more efficient under the true definition of the term. And it shows it'd be very shortsighted to make a scheme to scrap the low mileage old thirsty cars, less efficient per mile they might be, low polluters per year they also are due to low usage.

I know you'll bring up the flaws in the VED system connected to this but i'll say the same two things about it i always to. 1) It rewards vehicles which are more efficient, whether doing 20k means it pollutes more than a car doing 5k which costs more to tax is beside the point, it was more efficient over that longer period and 2) if you dont like it, buy something else LOL