RE: Scrappage carnage detailed
Discussion
Lowtimer said:
On the contrary, quite well thought out in that it did exactly what it was intended to achieve. Of course there was collateral damage to the groups you mention but no-one in the last government cared about them in the slightest.
The policy was absolutely intended to get rid of as many old cars as possible and cause people to buy new cars from franchised main dealers. The rest of the motor trade was a non priority: enthusiasts with older cars were considered to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
The scheme was intended to kick start the car industry under pressure from the SMMT and it may have achieved that. But there was no need to scrap the cars outright and immediately. They could have been stripped for spares. And what Government can afford to ignore the tax take from the enthusiast industry? If the aim as you said was to take old cars off the road under the green banner then it was not well thought out at all since not all the cars were that old or in poor condition and more co2 is produced in building new ones. The policy was absolutely intended to get rid of as many old cars as possible and cause people to buy new cars from franchised main dealers. The rest of the motor trade was a non priority: enthusiasts with older cars were considered to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
No, the aim was the permanent removal of those cars from use, and thus to support the new car distribution system and via them the motor manufacturers as much as possible. The environmental argument was a convenient fig-leaf. The loss of spare parts for other old cars was an intended side-effect of the policy, not an accidental one, as it helped to encourage people to update in the longer term.
The government did not give a rats backside about the tax take from enthusiasts. What it cared about was keeping volumes of new vehicles going. The tax take, and other economic effects of that policy, were seen as vastly more important.
The government did not give a rats backside about the tax take from enthusiasts. What it cared about was keeping volumes of new vehicles going. The tax take, and other economic effects of that policy, were seen as vastly more important.
Edited by Lowtimer on Wednesday 1st October 14:47
The Hypno-Toad said:
Saab 900 T16S...
Noooo!!!
Believe it or not but the T16S was traded in by my brother-in-law who was and still proclaims to be a Piston-head. The SAAB was rough requiring major welding in the floor and boot. Engine was smoky and leather was seriously pitted and torn. A real money pit waiting to bankrupt someone. Still a shame though.Noooo!!!
Lowtimer said:
Contigo said:
But why weren't they scrapped rather than put on a runway in Bedfordshire?
That is a good question. Do we have absolute proof - i.e. a substantiated eyewitness account from 201 - that they are still there? Metadata from photos in websites can be highly misleading.
Just found this thread and, whilst I'm not going to plough through 13 pages of posts, I may well have been in the same position as a lot of people on here.
Back in 2009 I was trying to sell my beloved Merc 300CE in order to help fund the purchase of a C32.
I spent years and a great deal of money restoring what was a piece of junk into something I loved but, when I came to sell it, no one seemed to want it.
Despite advertising it on various sites, including this one, I eventually managed to sell it for a paltry £1800.
Had I been in the position of looking for a new car the obvious thing to have done would have been to succumb to the scrappage scheme and make an additional £200.
The fact that I would rather have given it away than let it be scrapped doesn't change the fact that a lot of people wouldn't have been so sentimental.
Back in 2009 I was trying to sell my beloved Merc 300CE in order to help fund the purchase of a C32.
I spent years and a great deal of money restoring what was a piece of junk into something I loved but, when I came to sell it, no one seemed to want it.
Despite advertising it on various sites, including this one, I eventually managed to sell it for a paltry £1800.
Had I been in the position of looking for a new car the obvious thing to have done would have been to succumb to the scrappage scheme and make an additional £200.
The fact that I would rather have given it away than let it be scrapped doesn't change the fact that a lot of people wouldn't have been so sentimental.
FRA53R said:
No wonder I can't find any Primera gt's now, over 50 gone. That must have been most of what was left in 2009.
https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/nissan_primera_gtMore were scrapped/sorned in 2008 (89 out of 237) than in 2009 (52 out of 148)
2008: 38% scrapped
2009: 35% scrapped
2010: 35% scrapped
2011: 40% scrapped
2012: 30% scrapped
2013: 4% scrapped
So basically now with 25 surviving, that's the number of people in the UK who gave a s
t enough to preserve them. I call cow poo, those minis look surprisingly clean and rust free to me considering how long they have allegedly been sat there.
Garett said:
There is a closed group on Facebook called 'Classic Car Scrapyard finds'. If you join there are people in the group who have photos that they claim were taken this week of cars from the scrappage scheme still sat there.
chrisxr2 said:
I call cow poo, those minis look surprisingly clean and rust free to me considering how long they have allegedly been sat there.
I'm not saying you're wrong but with the white Toyota Soarer, its covered in green slime - that tallys with it being sat there for 5 years.Garett said:
There is a closed group on Facebook called 'Classic Car Scrapyard finds'. If you join there are people in the group who have photos that they claim were taken this week of cars from the scrappage scheme still sat there.
Well described reality of Scrappage from dealer perspective. Completely agree. No way could any dealer afford to lose the subsidy after an an audit. Although I was surprised by the volume of prestige cars sold, BMW especially had a field day.
Alex P said:
There is quite a lot of nonsense being spoken here.
At the time of the scheme I worked in the sales department of a combined Mazda and Mitsubishi franchise. Contrary to what has been said by some, the scheme was very tightly run and no dealer (at least with any sense) would mess about with how it operated because of the risk of not getting paid if something was not right. We insisted that cars had current MOTs and the cars were not touched when they arrived-they were parked up round the back until the scrap transporter arrived. We also made sure that they were very accurately described in the paper work.
The reality (for our franchises at least) was that the new cars sold through the scheme did not have the usual margins, nor did they count towards qtr targets, therefore the handling fee just about paid for delivery, plates and a PDI. The last thing you wanted was to not receive the £2,000 from the government!
As for the assumption that people with interesting cars know their value, this is not always the case. Admittedly most think their car is worth more than it is, but when cars get older, a surprising number of owners think their car is actually quite worthless (whether they are or not).
There are very few cars that we took in on the scheme that were genuinely bad (perhaps they all bought Hyundai i10s - the cheapest way into a new car?). Most were quite well looked after with quite a few years of life left in them. These who ran 'sheds' were unlikely to suddenly find £15k to buy a new car...
We did have a few interesting old cars who's owners came in on the scheme. One had a mid 90s MX5, fortunately for the car, we were able to put together a better deal through normal channels by lumping in a bit more on the MX5 - this was one of the lucky ones - it received a cosmetic tidy up and now sits in the show room (or at least it did last time I visited).
The mint 200sx swapped against a new RX8 wasn't so lucky. The problem was that cars like that couldn't be given away back in 2009 (recession/fuel prices etc.)
Many decent stuff was scrapped because the £2000 was between trade and retail. Imagine that a solid E36 328 may have retailed for £2,995 back then. Well it would have been worth £1-1.5k in the trade, I.e. lower than the scrappage discount and if they were looking at a cheap car, the margin would not have been their to make up the difference in over allowance. Basically the E36 would have gone to the scrapper and have been replaced by a new Hyundai or similar.
Unfortunately this will have been the fate of many a decent, solid car back then. Also, it had a significant effect on the availability of cheaper used cars. Our trade buyers really ran short of the typical nice clean £1-£3k retail stuff because of the scheme. Many people who relied on a decent supply within this price bracket for their transport needs did face a shortage of nice clean stuff because those cars were owned by the type people who could afford to go and buy something new on scrappage. Instead of a 10 year old car being swapped for a 3 year old car, it was swapped for a new car and then scrapped.
At the time of the scheme I worked in the sales department of a combined Mazda and Mitsubishi franchise. Contrary to what has been said by some, the scheme was very tightly run and no dealer (at least with any sense) would mess about with how it operated because of the risk of not getting paid if something was not right. We insisted that cars had current MOTs and the cars were not touched when they arrived-they were parked up round the back until the scrap transporter arrived. We also made sure that they were very accurately described in the paper work.
The reality (for our franchises at least) was that the new cars sold through the scheme did not have the usual margins, nor did they count towards qtr targets, therefore the handling fee just about paid for delivery, plates and a PDI. The last thing you wanted was to not receive the £2,000 from the government!
As for the assumption that people with interesting cars know their value, this is not always the case. Admittedly most think their car is worth more than it is, but when cars get older, a surprising number of owners think their car is actually quite worthless (whether they are or not).
There are very few cars that we took in on the scheme that were genuinely bad (perhaps they all bought Hyundai i10s - the cheapest way into a new car?). Most were quite well looked after with quite a few years of life left in them. These who ran 'sheds' were unlikely to suddenly find £15k to buy a new car...
We did have a few interesting old cars who's owners came in on the scheme. One had a mid 90s MX5, fortunately for the car, we were able to put together a better deal through normal channels by lumping in a bit more on the MX5 - this was one of the lucky ones - it received a cosmetic tidy up and now sits in the show room (or at least it did last time I visited).
The mint 200sx swapped against a new RX8 wasn't so lucky. The problem was that cars like that couldn't be given away back in 2009 (recession/fuel prices etc.)
Many decent stuff was scrapped because the £2000 was between trade and retail. Imagine that a solid E36 328 may have retailed for £2,995 back then. Well it would have been worth £1-1.5k in the trade, I.e. lower than the scrappage discount and if they were looking at a cheap car, the margin would not have been their to make up the difference in over allowance. Basically the E36 would have gone to the scrapper and have been replaced by a new Hyundai or similar.
Unfortunately this will have been the fate of many a decent, solid car back then. Also, it had a significant effect on the availability of cheaper used cars. Our trade buyers really ran short of the typical nice clean £1-£3k retail stuff because of the scheme. Many people who relied on a decent supply within this price bracket for their transport needs did face a shortage of nice clean stuff because those cars were owned by the type people who could afford to go and buy something new on scrappage. Instead of a 10 year old car being swapped for a 3 year old car, it was swapped for a new car and then scrapped.
andyps said:
Dr Interceptor said:
The Minis were still there in Mid-August when I was last up there.
It really is time they were released for spares if that is the case - the government could do quite well on that basis as there is definitely a demand.xRIEx said:
andyps said:
Dr Interceptor said:
The Minis were still there in Mid-August when I was last up there.
It really is time they were released for spares if that is the case - the government could do quite well on that basis as there is definitely a demand.I won't mention the car type because the manager involved still works for the dealership, but an employee of a friend of mine at the time ran a collectible early 80s car in middling nick, and had a near-identical mint example of the same car come in for scrappage - it was even from the same run of registration numbers. At the time the cars were loaded onto a truck and taken to a nearby compound before being picked up and forwarded on. He persuaded my friend - who was sympathetic but said if anything went wrong it would be on his own head - to let him have the keys to the compound for a weekend. He assumed he would just rob the mint car for anything he needed, but months later found out - after the employee had moved on from the dealership - that he'd simply swapped the plates and VIN over and left his old car in the compound.
Oh that is sad. I thought the idea was that the cars were actually going to be scrapped and recycled, not left out on a runway for years! Obviously the scheme was created to jump start the faltering UK car industry, by importing ship loads of Korean manufactured tat... May be these scrappage scheme cars should be donated to a third world country in lieu of our overseas aid payments - they'll soon be driving about in better cars than we are!
Fun Bus said:
And in the process ended up with a car with mismatching chassis and engine numbers.
Well yes, and I know technically you should inform the DVLA of an engine swap even if it's like for like (which this would appear to the DVLA to be), but even if he hasn't done that, unless he has an accident and the insurance company check the engine against the VIN I doubt if it'd ever come to light. I can't see it happening; I'd bet even in the latter situation the insurance company wouldn't bother to do that unless it was obvious you'd swapped the engine for something else and not told them. Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff