| The crap in scrappage |
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As far as I can make out, this new ‘scrappage’ scheme’ to encourage the purchase of new cars is entirely futile. The £2,000 ‘grant’, derived jointly from the government and the vehicle maker will be made available only to owners who scrap cars more than ten years old. I imagine there a few people driving 10-15-year-old cars out of choice. They do so because they can afford nothing newer, either because their income is too low, or more probably, because their circumstances prevent their achieving the necessary credit rating required to by a new car on hire-purchase. Moreover, we are in the middle of a recession in which credit-worthy customers are struggling to obtain credit – let alone those who do not come up to the line. Moreover, if there is a car sales boom now, there will be a consequent decline in a couple of years’ time: the trade is famously cyclic and troughs always follow peaks, and vice versa. As for doing our bit to save the planet, this is palpable nonsense. China already increases its CO2 output each year by an amount equal to the entire CO2 output of the UK, and is opening a new coal-fired power station every five days. And the energy race and boom in cars sales in China has only just begun; as it has in India. And since both these nations give any notion of a global pact on CO2 emissions a stiff finger, any effort on our part is entirely nugatory.
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The scrappage idea may be a good one but I agree that its timing is poor. At this time of the credit crunch, a lot of people’s priorities are not to purchase new cars. There are more pressing needs like credit card debts, mortgages, jobs and household expenses.
limo hire birmingham | 24 Apr 09 - 14:08“I imagine there a few people driving 10-15-year-old cars out of choice. They do so because they can afford nothing newer, either because their income is too low, or more probably, because their circumstances prevent their achieving the necessary credit rating required to by a new car on hire-purchase.”
or perhaps another reason:
their old car is perfectly fine for what they want to do with it, and they dont see any good reason to waste money on keeping up with the joneses or any of the other sort of nonsense that got us into this mess in the first place.
Albert | 29 Apr 09 - 18:41This is basically a futile tactic to try and increase sales during this credit crunch. I think it may work to some extent, if I was going to buy a car, now would probably be the best time to buy that I have seen in recent years. However, in reality actual buyers will be few and far between.
As a side note, I just came back from Dubai and they are incorporating a similar idea there due to the excessive number of cars on the road. They don’t give you a discount on a new car but instead just pay you the scrap value. Suddenly old cars are becoming hugely popular as bulk buyers are trying to cash in on scrapping these old cars for profit….
Repossessed Cars | 13 May 09 - 11:57We have a perfectly useable Daihatsu Sirion about 10 years old, with 100,000 miles on the clock. It uses very little fuel and has very low emissions. It’s worth far less than £2k but the idea of trading in a good, workable car only for it to be destroyed is offensive - both financially (my dad is a Yorkshireman), and - since we’d need to buy a factory-produced new one - environmentally.
Yet another ill-thought out idea from Our Leaders.
Charis Whitcombe | 05 Jun 09 - 9:25