Gov scrap car scheme

silverhorse

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The government is proposing a scheme to give up to £2500 to anyone scrapping a car over 9 years old as part of a trade in for a new or nearly new car. The detais are vague at the moment but Germany have apparently had success with a similar scheme. Will this work in UK.
 

Alex M Grieve

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The government is proposing a scheme to give up to £2500 to anyone scrapping a car over 9 years old as part of a trade in for a new or nearly new car. The details are vague at the moment but Germany have apparently had success with a similar scheme. Will this work in UK.

Sounds like another government ploy which will cost a lot, regardless of outcome. It will certainly knock the bottom out of all car sales at less than £2,500 - and many of these cars still have lots of life in them. Melting them all down and re-using the materials is going to be very "carbon unfriendly".

I suppose the upside is that it will preserve the automotive industry, and all of their providers who depend on them, for a few more years. But it will only delay the inevitable.

The longer lasting products we enjoy today will still dictate a reduced demand for replacement in future, so production has to throttle back at some point, and we have now effectively lost "market forces" as a means of natural selection.

People tend to forget that when Michelin introduced the radial ply tyre, effectively quadrupling mileage, that they nearly went out of business because of falling sales/oversupply.
 

GseRacing

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im going to start buying every second hand car i can for £500 and put it through this scheme!

I dont like this idea because surely the VATheft and road tax on a, for example, £37k MB will come to more than £2500! the cheeky gits are still winning out. how does this leave our classic market? what about the real oldies? obviously from now on in there will be no more classics ro am i misunderstanding something?
 
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silverhorse

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The details of this proposed scheme are yet to be decided ,if and when it goes ahead but if you want to know more about the present German scheme search "German government scrap cars" and there are numerous sites about it all but as I see it you would need to find and scrap a very cheap car to "play" but I am sure that the only winners will be the government and the dealer.
 

d215yq

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im going to start buying every second hand car i can for £500 and put it through this scheme!

I dont like this idea because surely the VATheft and road tax on a, for example, £37k MB will come to more than £2500! the cheeky gits are still winning out. how does this leave our classic market? what about the real oldies? obviously from now on in there will be no more classics ro am i misunderstanding something?

Or instead buy as many interesting future classics that are under £2k as you can and hold onto them and see what their worth in 5 years time when the majority of the models will have happily been scrapped by the short-termists for a few hundreds quid profit (which will then be lost in the first month's depreciation of the new car anyway)...

...Good excuse for me to go hunting for an sec and/or 190e cosworth for summer ;)
 
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PanzerMcGrory

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Theoretically you will be able to get very few second hand cars for under £2500 as they will be worth more as scrap value.
 

MBDevotee

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As I see it, the kind of people driving 7+yr old cars are unlikely to have bought them brand new.

A 6 month old car will have lost around 25-40% of it's value - which will in 99.9% of cases a lot more than £2500....

So buy a brand new car for say £35,000 and have £2500 knocked off it... or buy a 6 month old one for £25-30000 and only get £1500 for the px....

so... Logically, those who aren't adverse to buying a used car, will still look at used or nearly new.

What will happen is people who would have bought new anyway will go out and buy a £50 banger, then drive to the dealer and get their £2500 for it, and we the taxpayer will pay for it....

Stupid idea.

I know they claim Germany's done well - but I think that it's a short term solution.
 

bigasotonuk

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Hi,
My uncle told me about this scheme, if you look at the small print it says the PX vehicle has to have been owned by the buyer for 18 months i think.
 

d215yq

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Definitely a bad idea but don't underestimate what people will do when they think they are "getting something for nothing". Obviously the new car will depreciate a lot but people will still think they've gained as they will see themselves getting 2,500 for something worth a couple of hundred quid
and wont see the full picture. Many people i know can't understand how at 24 i can afford to run such an "extravagant" car as my modest e220 coupe. yes it only gets 33mpg compared to the 50 they get from their brand new golf but it cost me £2k to buy and doesnt depreciate by £4k per year.

Oh, and I also havent had to take out finance i cant really afford to buy it, which no doubt many people who take up the governments proposed scheme will be doing to fund the remaining balance!
 

hairyg

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We sold my wife's R reg Peugeot 306 last week for £620 on e-Bay.

Chatted to the buyer when he came to collect it, joking that it is now worth £2500 under the proposed scheme. His response was that he had never paid that much for a car in his life and wasn't going to start now.

It seems to me that the scheme will only work if the owners of older cars can afford to buy new or nearly new cars. Yet another example of this administration encouraging people to take on unaffordable debt, which is how they got us into this mess in the first place.

Am I going to scrap my 15 year old R129 and get an eco-bubble? What do you think!
 

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We sold my wife's R reg Peugeot 306 last week for £620 on e-Bay.

Chatted to the buyer when he came to collect it, joking that it is now worth £2500 under the proposed scheme. His response was that he had never paid that much for a car in his life and wasn't going to start now.

It seems to me that the scheme will only work if the owners of older cars can afford to buy new or nearly new cars. Yet another example of this administration encouraging people to take on unaffordable debt, which is how they got us into this mess in the first place.

Am I going to scrap my 15 year old R129 and get an eco-bubble? What do you think!

Indeed you should, when you have I will do the same
 

Geoff2

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My 10 year old S class has only done 63k, I wouldn't dream of scrapping it, indeed book price is probably higher than what the gov could offer. Now, smaller cars I can understand. On another note, I wonder if they are trying to stop the imports, most Imprezzas and Skylines are usually over 10 years old to avoid the paperwork requirements if importing cars.
 

st4

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Again, like the proposed minimum price of alcohol, the government is meddling in something it doesn't really understand in the name of promoting greeness.

I thought it was green to keep an older car, I thought it was financial prudent to buy what you can afford and not borrow, yet this scheme single handedly manages to promote the two worst behaviours that have brought about the prediciment we are in. Needless borrowing and wastefulness. Running a banger is the opposite of this.

I come back to my point therefore that our government is incompetant, uninformed and clutching @ straws to fix a problem it created yet does not understand. Within 2 years gordo has bailed out banks and meddled in financial institutions and affairs he doesn't understand, and scrapeds the very tax band that favour the people that actually vote for him....

Nu lab, Gordon brown doesn't know its ar*e from its elbow and it shows
 

roofless

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We sold my wife's R reg Peugeot 306 last week for £620 on e-Bay.

Chatted to the buyer when he came to collect it, joking that it is now worth £2500 under the proposed scheme. His response was that he had never paid that much for a car in his life and wasn't going to start now.

It seems to me that the scheme will only work if the owners of older cars can afford to buy new or nearly new cars. Yet another example of this administration encouraging people to take on unaffordable debt, which is how they got us into this mess in the first place.

Am I going to scrap my 15 year old R129 and get an eco-bubble? What do you think!
if you do it's time for me to go into the scrap busness :-D
 

Alex M Grieve

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Indeed you should, when you have I will do the same

I would counsel against scrapping your car Malcolm (I know you weren't serious, really).

Even if it never moves again, it will provide you with endless challenges and pleasure - more "occupational therapy" than you can shake a stick at.

After all, if you weren't doing that, and the zillions of posts, you would probably be well into your 3rd ASBO by now! ;):rolleyes:;)
 

hawk20

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Theoretically you will be able to get very few second hand cars for under £2500 as they will be worth more as scrap value.

This is not really so. The govt scheme will not give £2,500 scrap value. Nor does the German scheme.

What you get is £2,500 IF you buy a new or nearly new car (under a year old). Few people with old bangers can afford to do that. So the market for cars under £2,500 (even under £1,000) continues even when this scheme is in place.

The abuse of the scheme (ah those unintended consequences) will be that some people who were going to buy a new or nearly new car even without the scheme being there, will find it pays to buy an old banger first so as to get the grant.
 

Rory

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It seems to me that the scheme will only work if the owners of older cars can afford to buy new or nearly new cars. Yet another example of this administration encouraging people to take on unaffordable debt, which is how they got us into this mess in the first place.

Apparantly Germany's scheme has been very successful and presumeably there will be people in similar financial positions in the UK too. France's scheme hasn't had a very good take-up though.
 

Alex M Grieve

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Apparantly Germany's scheme has been very successful and presumeably there will be people in similar financial positions in the UK too. France's scheme hasn't had a very good take-up though.

We need to be cautious when comparing notes on a German scheme. If they have a rule which says "do it", they all do it (teutonic you see).

In the UK we tend to have rules which say "don't do it". Law abiding citizens follow the rule and don't do it. The people or groups that the rule was originally designed to discourage, just carry on anyway, e.g. don't drop litter, don't exceed the speed limit, don't drive without insurance, etc.

So, just because it worked in Germany ..............:confused:
 

TheScrapman

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This is not really so. The govt scheme will not give £2,500 scrap value. Nor does the German scheme.

What you get is £2,500 IF you buy a new or nearly new car (under a year old). Few people with old bangers can afford to do that. So the market for cars under £2,500 (even under £1,000) continues even when this scheme is in place.

The abuse of the scheme (ah those unintended consequences) will be that some people who were going to buy a new or nearly new car even without the scheme being there, will find it pays to buy an old banger first so as to get the grant.

Exactly. I think some people have missed the point here.

That £2.5k is only available if you have another 6k+ to buy a new car.

Another great government idea. :rolleyes: Get people to take out even more loans and get into even more debt and their perfectly serviceable Saxo worth £800 goes to the crusher, creating a far bigger environmental issue than just using the car 'till it's no longer financially viable.

Extendedlifevehicle-ver2.jpg

Stickers as produced by a good friend of mine!
 

HERBIEMERCMAN

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my neighbour just purchased a new big jap / chinese 4x4, it has all the bells and whistles including 5 yr warranty. the retail price was circa £29k, they gave him a new small car for his wife, the retail on this car was circa £6,700. so come on i don't think he was unhappy when he sold both their old cars on e-bay. when you look at what we pay for our cars in the uk and what you can get for cash, no trade in, then the scheme is a farce, non green, political shortermism for jobs and politics. herbiemercman.
 


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