Oh well, we’ll be rid of the idiotic-decision makers soon…lets see what the next lot are like…
Such a shame,it does my head in this kind of waste.
This is really crazy - that looks like a normal car park not a scrap yard of decrepid cars - I bet most of them are fine. I saw a great TV programme a couple of years back about how people scrap cars that are fine - some guys bought a Peugeot from a scrapyard, repaired it for very little money and drove it all the way to Morocco to prove a point.
There is a real culture of having a new car on HP in this country - we recently needed to get a family car thanks to a new addition and a few of my friends asked me if I would be scrapping my (verygood condition) MK1 to take advantage of the scheme and get a new car - you can imagine my reply…
Sadly we are becoming more of a throw-away society every year, its starting to get like the States. 
Whilst I scour the ads for a cheap car that will tow a car trailer any of those in the Daily Mails picture would do a treat, seems rediculous that they will just be torn apart.
–>
The whole idea was
ridiculous from start to finish.
I wonder how may of
those cars could have been sold for more that the alleged 2K people
got for them (because we all know that it is 1K really), if the owner
could just have been bothered to sell them privately.
Good grief !!! what an absolute waste.
I don’t think these are scrappage cars.
Pretty sure I see a 2003+ Ignis there (ie.not qualifying). And since when do owners of Merc M-Classes happily accept £2k for their trade-ins. I think this is just a field of cars due for the auctions or for export to the developing world. Around here, dealers are clearly sorting out scrappage scheme cars with scrawls across the glass. The cars in the photograph are mostly very clean. Also, do Ligier Ambra Microcars qualify? Reliant Robins don’t.
And the ebay ad? I will take the sellers claim that this is an utterly mint low mileage MX5 with a huge pinch of salt (my guess is that it has serious mechanical problems or a dirty little history that rendered it worthless). And anyhow, haven’t MX5 specialists been importing perfectly good MX5s for parts for years. Ka Yu used to have a racket going where in the barn, kevin would be cutting up 2-3 decent looking Roadsters at a time.
As usual, its a powerful photograph used to support a politically charged story, but the photograph is probably dishonest.
Meanwhile, the analogue signal turn-off is gathering pace, so there will be more pictures like this:
I threw out a TV set the other day because I couldn’t get the remote working. Perfectly good set, built circa 1994. Of course, I hadn’t actually used it for 10 years…
21 thousand miles. Jeebus. What a terrible, terrible waste. Presumably you can’t buy the thing and fit a new shell and legally put it back on the road or anything?
(I have to say - the tartan bits are horrible, mind!)
I agree, looks like the Daily Mail outrage strikes again!
In the close-up shot it does not look as if any of the cars have been made unusable, which is what I would have expected (windows smashed, hoods slashed, paitnwork damaged/paint pured over them etc) so I think this piccie can be taken with a pinch of salt. Are pick-ups eligible anyway?
No-one is forcing people to have thier old cars scrapped - but put simply, if the best deal you can get on your old car is to turn it in for scrap - then so be it, it is your choice. Even more so if you advertise and no one wants the car.
I recntly sold my wife’s micra (to help pay for the MX5!) - and the simple maths gave me these options
- Sell for what its worth on the market (which I did, for £1250)
- Sell to one of the scumbag traders offering £850, take it or leave it mate (I left it)
- Put into the garage for a few years in case another scrappage scheme came up - just MOT and give it a run from time to time
The real shame is - it does push up the price of cheap cars such as the £800 bargain my daughter as a student bought with full MOT and 12 months tax, just to last a year. Which was sold on 4 years later. These sort of bargains from that type of source (owner buys brand new every now and again, has car meticulously serviced etc.) are rapidly disappearing, leaving just the rubbish behind.
Good point - I didn’t clearly inspect the cars but I think you are right - some of these are too good for scrappage.
Mind you I did read a list of some of the cars that had been scrapped when the scheme launched and amongst the Fiestas and Micras were a few MG Midgets, Triumphs and MX5s - they were probably rust buckets but I still thought it was a shame to scrap a sportscar…
The shell has to be crushed, and if it does turn out to be fairly sound then this is where the real shame lies.
Legally, there is nothing to stop you from buying everything else and rebuilding it into a donor shell, logistically this would be a PITA if the original shell has to remain in the salvage yard until it goes to the crusher. Andrew Stott has some bare shells with documents to go. It would probably lose all provenance as a genuine Gleneagles special edition and the donor Roadster shell would probably be older and necessitate an earlier registration prefix letter.
AT.
Oddly enough the Gleneagles reg does not trigger the DVLA car search unlike others they are scrapping,the Lexus for example.
Wonder if SORN or the “scheme” wipes it off the DVLA system pronto? Either way, the poor wee thing is well boogered now.
Or that its hookey. Under scrappage, the car becomes a Cat-B; it doesn’t enter some sort of peculiar category. I can search for old cars of mine, which I know to have been long since scrapped, and find them on the system, so to speak. Depends if I can be bothered, but who’s to say if N620PFH is actually supposed to be on a Mazda. I’ve played around with the system to show that a number of Land Rovers and Minis on sale in the US are clones of scrapped cars.
Take away the fancy wrapping, and what you have is Government money (that’s yours and mine, by the way) being injected into the motor manufacturing industry. It wasn’t in the manifesto, as far as I’m aware, so was never an issue on which you and I could express an opinion via our votes. It’s put quite a few independent budget car traders out of business, and caused a shortage of good low-cost used cars.
The fancy wrapping was of the usual environmental pattern, which doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
How about encouraging the manufacturers to take back the scrappers, recyle the dross and refurbish the good ones?