Click the link below to access the full list of cars destroyed in the Government Scrappage Scheme back in 2009. I’ve not totalled up yet but it looks like an awful lot of MX-5s, several hundred.
The data inputting was clearly awful as the MX-5 crops up under many names and the list also show that one of the uber rare Mazda MG MGFs was destroyed!
So were all those really worth £2000.00 or less to the owners as thats all they got back as a discount.
Never mind the 5s lets not mention quite a few other classic / potential classics of the future, all now lost.
If I’d been the owner of an old MX5 and wanted to swop for a new car, I’m sure I’d have been happy to let someone pay me £2k for it if they wanted to, rather than its “Proper” market value if that was lower!
A tragically misguided scheme. In ecological terms (which is how the scheme was sold to us), it would have been better to pay owners of older cars £2000 to have them repaired or overhauled so that they could meet emissions limits etc. It makes no sense to scrap a car that is running (or could be made so) and then waste energy and resources in mining the metal, making the plastics, and running the factories to build brand new cars that will use a bit less fuel.
The only people to benefit were the car manufacturers. What a gift - you sell a product, and then the Govt pays people to throw it away if they promise to buy a new one.
Environmentally-friendly? No. Powerful lobbying by the car industry? Probably.
(And, of course, it was not ‘free’ money, as so many people think Govt money is. That money could have gone to pay for more teachers or improve the NHS.)
And to make it even less green I believe all the scrapped cars had to be completely destroyed, there was no means to use parts for salvage.
Being the proud owners of an N reg Fiat Cinquecento we considered taking the £2000.00, far more than it was worth back then, but we resisted. The car is still going, still costing us very little to run, and in all the years since has no way created as much carbon as the construction and use of a brand new car would have done…
The scheme no doubt helped the motor industry at the time, which may have been worth it, but it no way helped the environment…
But do you folks realise that all the scrappage cars, including many great old classics, and the hundreds of MX-5s, are still all sitting on an airfield in Bedfordshire waiting for someone to do something with them! I personally can’t believe it… Its bad enough we had the daft scheme in the first place but to then just leave them for all these years, well, it beggars belief. So actually I’m not entirely sure I do believe it… Anyone know if this place?
This is them apparently, right next to Bedford Autodrome…
The manufacturer of the replacement new car funded £1000, so it only cost the taxpayer £1000 per car. Undoubtably a lot of rarely used cars were scrapped in favour of new ones (probably used a lot more) so any supposed CO2 benefits would be marginal (assuming you buy into the CO2 warming theory in which case the deadline from Al Gore to save the planet from catching fire is only a few months away!).
So when exactly was this photo taken? And when did it change from the Daily Mail images that looked like something like the retreat to Baghdad, to suddenly becoming neat rows of cars, mostly arranged by colour? Or are these also the new cars that are stored at Thurleigh? Looks like there are a couple of roads you can get on, to check how many rusted Metros and MX5s are sitting there.
I didn’t say it was fact, but have read today someone has just started a petition to have the cars sold on to young drivers or some, to me, really daft idea which is why it’s now got me interested. If you look at the many aerial shots of the site on gearth, maps and bing etc, there are all sorts of different parking arrangements shown, so the area must have been used as a large car and commericals compound for many years…