What makes you all of the rumoured Budget (late April) incentive of giving you two grand to scrap your old, old car and buy a new one?

It is supposed to work like this:

• Take your banger to the authorised recycling centre to give your car away.
  
• You receive a certificate.
  
• The certificate entitles you £2000 off a new or under one year old car (not just UK built) from any UK dealer.
  

Now, I like this scheme... why... guess what? My Focus is 9 years and 5 months old.. I was recently offered £600 for it, and I'm in the market for a new car!

The idea is to get the UK motor industry working again and get a lot of inefficient, seriously un-green cars at the same time. It went down really well in Germany and other countries, so why not try it here? I just don't think there is many people like me who hang on to cars for years and then consider buying a brand new one... People like me tend to buy older cars in the first place, not leap from banger to beauty in one easy step.

Will it kill stone dead the car market at the dealerships until the offer starts? I hope, so I might get a better deal if I decide to stick to my plan to buy a 2 1/2 year old Roomster I've seen.

Will it work? Will you be planning to cash in?

The idea is to get the UK motor industry working again and get a lot of inefficient, seriously un-green cars at the same time. It went down really well in Germany and other countries, so why not try it here? I just don't think there is many people like me who hang on to cars for years and then consider buying a brand new one... People like me tend to buy older cars in the first place, not leap from banger to beauty in one easy step.

It will not help the UK car industry at all, what it will do is help the car industry in every other european country. Virtually none of the mainstream car makers, bar a couple of japanese ones have factories in the UK.

Who will pay for it in the end, it will be us the british tax payer. Taxes have risen sharply in Germany to pay for the scheme over there.

Cars in the UK have required a Catalytic converter since 1992 by law, and very few cars on the roads now are older than this so the green statement does not really stand. Those running these older cars will be unable to afford to buy a nearly new one, its why they run old cars in the first place.

Also, the £2K you would get would be a discount of the RRP of the new car. You can already negotiate a larger discount than this if you try, so the savings may well be minimal.

It may work elsewhere, but in the UK I dont think it will.

Then there is what to do with all these cars taken off the road, they will need to be stored somewhere before being recycled and just like the current WEE directive for electrical appliances it will lead to mountains of cars sitting in fields for years and that in itself is not green either.

Cars in the UK have required a Catalytic converter since 1992 by law,.

Technically not true, they are required to pass an emmision test, if they can do it without a cat but achieve the same results that is ok. A few have been able to do it, but not a lot I must admit.

It'll have the same effect as 'warm front' or whatever the initiative is called, or the 'green' energy grants - mysteriously the prices charged by the insulation, windmill etc. companies go up by the amount of the grant, one way or another it just gets raked off and the customer is no better off and the government has wasted more taxpayers' money.

If this was to happen my perfectly serviceable Fabia with only 41K on the clock and not a spot of rust on it would be crushed! Surely the environmental 'cost' of building a new car would run a car already on the roads for years?? Even though its an MPI 8V it still aces the emissions test each year and by some margin over what is allowed! Also , say I took their £2500 and my Fabia was crushed , then used the money to buy a new Mitsi Evo , how is that helping the environment? I suspect there would have to be a 'low emission' caveat in the deal , so no-one would take the preverbial p1ss! I cant see it happening here , however good it would be to get an extra £1500 over what my car is worth.

It will not help the UK car industry at all, what it will do is help the car industry in every other european country. Virtually none of the mainstream car makers, bar a couple of japanese ones have factories in the UK.

I don't like to quote made up statistics but...

when the car industry crisis first started going mainstream, I heard Prof. Garel Rhys (look him up) on the radio explaining that approximately 75% of the cars assembled in the UK were exported and 85% of new UK cars are imported which helps confirm your point.

The only disclaimer I'll make is that it was a while ago and those figures might be vice versa but you get the idea.

our works transits came from belgium i believe

i reckon the 2k off will be covered by the government giving garages vat free on that purchase of up to 2k with each certificate

There is another point as well, whats to stop the car manufacturers bumping up there prices by 2K. After all they would be getting a guarenteed income.

Any scheme introduced here would not be compulsory.

Reading on pistonheads the German scheme ends next month then its back to business as usual. I think it ran for 6 months overe there. Interestingly in france they are running the same scheme but with only €1K and not the €2.5K of germany.

This government wants to make its mind up!

One minute it wants us to abandon our cars and use public transport. It wants to tax 4x4s off the road.

Next minute it's pumping our tax money into a foreign owned 4x4 manufacturer for "research" and begging and bribing us to buy cars.

A year or so ago they were urging us to be prudent and save more - we have the lowest per capita savings out of whatever group of countries they selected to make their point. Now they are urging the "poor" to abandon the old banger thay can just about afford to run and get a big fat loan to buy a new one that will get reposessed 'cos they can't keep up the payments.

"What's the policy today Gordon?". "Hmmm... Don't know, which way is the wind blowing?"

This policy may work in Germany because they have a home car industry that makes cars the Germans want to buy. It will work in France because they have a home industry and stick 2 fingers up at EU control and so will limit the payment to those who are buying French manufactured cars.

We, on the other hand lick the ar5e of the EU so would never dare add any "Made in Britain" condition but there again we have bu66er all home car industry to support anyway.

our works transits came from belgium i believe

What a stupid thing to do bearing in mind they are built in Southampton. You would have thought they would make it here and then use it to fulfil an order from here. No doubt some guy in beligum got his transit and it was made in Southampton:rofl:

Why have I got to pay for other people to buy new cars?

What happens with all these bangers that will get traded in. Do they get resold so they can be traded in again? Or do we then have to pay an EU recycling fine to scrap them? So I (the taxpayer) get hit twice.

Why not reduce VAT on new cars?

Plus when it comes down to it, how green is a new car Vs an old one anyway? If I change my car every 2 years to the latest green motor will I use more or less energy over all than sticking with the same motor for 10years?

Piece of nonsense. Give it up Brown, bugger off!

Im biased on this, personally i think its a bad scheme overall, but SWMBO needs rid of her old Furby, only worth a grand private, god knows how little p/x, and it needs work. If she can get 2 grand for it then happy days. She wants a citroen C1 so it would be a sizeable chunk of a 1 year old poverty spec model.

Im biased on this, personally i think its a bad scheme overall, but SWMBO needs rid of her old Furby, only worth a grand private, god knows how little p/x, and it needs work. If she can get 2 grand for it then happy days. She wants a citroen C1 so it would be a sizeable chunk of a 1 year old poverty spec model.

I wouldnt think it would be 2K. Only the german scheme is offering 2K, the french scheme is offering €1000 which equates to £900 or so. The german scheme would be to expensive, as the germans have found out to their cost with recent tax increases to pay for it.

My question is what will happen to the value of all the old bangers out there? Cars that are currently worth say £500 could be potentially worth £2000 to someone.

I guess they might put something in there to say you've had to own the car for a certain length of time or you could just buy anything old off ebay - as long as you've got time to register it in your name.

If they don't get it right, could be some money to be made - stockpile a load of old cars bought at low prices, say £500 and then sell them on to someone for say £1000 or £1500 so that the buyers could be eligible for the £2k off...

You'll have had to have owned the car for at least a year i imagine.

The **** take is that those who have money will benefit from it, as they'll just buy a cheap one now, store it SORN and wait for this arrangement to kick in. Then when it does, it's easy discount.

Those who can hardly afford a car at all, will end up with a minimum price of a car of 2k, as below that, you'd do a deal with someone or buy new using your old one as a discount.

Prof. Garel Rhys did a great critique of this scheme on Radio 5 on Wednesday afternoon. To correct/confirm my earlier figures, 86% of new UK cars are imported and such a scheme would help foreign car industries not the UK's. Under these schemes people tend to scrap an old car and buy cheap small car as the cost to change is small. However, small cars account for 35% of the car market but only 2% are manufactured in the UK and that includes the MINI which is hardly budget motoring. Basically he said it was a waste of time and if thats good enough for him, its good enough for me.

This scheme would only be of benefit to the retail car industry as it would stimulate sales, but as said before, it has no benefit to UK car manufacturers.

The Germans and the French are on the most part, quite loyal to their national car makers when buying their cars. They probably also get incentives to buy domestic made cars, so I can see why the scheme works over there.

We haven't really got a UK owned car industry so all profits would go abroad. Unless you're after a London Taxi.

That said, I've got a 12 year old Jeep sat outside which is worth about £1K at best. If they do start this scheme, it's getting squashed!

Also if you have a banger, and an everyday car, could you crush the banger for the money off, and still trade in the everyday car as well?

Surely the environmental 'cost' of building a new car would run a car already on the roads for years??

I'm surprised more hasn't been made of this perfectly valid point: the only truly 'green' car is one that hasn't been built yet. I'm all for schemes to stimulate the economy in the current climate, but dressing them up as eco initiatives is an insult to my intelligence...

making a car costs more than it's entire life time fuel and oil running costs in terms of CO2, so the best thing to do with a new car would be to run it until it dies.

making a car costs more than it's entire life time fuel and oil running costs in terms of CO2, so the best thing to do with a new car would be to run it until it dies.

That's a bold claim

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Well if this scheme comes off, I'll give it a month before Tom takes advantage and gets something like ...... a small engined derv Corsa?

The german scheme is about to end, after 6 months of operating. The cost to the taxpayers in germany has been monumental, they have had significant tax rises to pay for the scheme.

The UK scheme if introduced, will I think be nothing like the german one but may well end up like the french one. You would get £900 for your old car (same as french scheme) in a voucher that you exchange for your brand new car. No other p/ex is allowed, and the car must be new. The price you pay will be based on the RRP of the car, so no discounts will apply. You would get a better deal just going in without any p/ex or voucher. Those running older cars will only be able to get a small car, since only 3% (radio this afternoon) of small cars sold are built in the UK the scheme will have zero effect on the UK economy. The economies of other EU states will do quiet nicely though, and the UK tax payer will as ever be left to fund the whole scheme and pay for the recycling of all the cars handed over as part of the scheme.

And as I have already mentioned, there is the environmental impact of storing all these cars waiting to be recycled. Current breakers/scrap yards may well be unable to cope with the cars going through. At least one local authority, is investigating land where to store the cars should the scheme be introduced. Imagine fields full of scrap cars in / around the countryside.

Edited 20 March, 200917 yr by mannyo

What a stupid thing to do bearing in mind they are built in Southampton. You would have thought they would make it here and then use it to fulfil an order from here. No doubt some guy in beligum got his transit and it was made in Southampton:rofl:

Sounds stupid, but it isn't!

Before my vRS I bought an Accord Type R . . . from Belgium.

Made in Swindon, shipped to Belgium, shipped back to the UK by me and I still saved £6000 . . .

Sounds stupid, but it isn't!