Hi,
I remember years ago being told that cars had built in obsolescence with built in failure points. , e.g. they had specific areas of the body that were designed to rust.
Nowadays, with cars generally being made more reliable (but not necssarily easier to fix), and having galvanised bodies, what are the weak spots of today's cars, and what final faults send them to automotive heaven?
"xscope" wrote
People becoming bored with them I would say. I would guess that a significant percentage of scrapped cars have very little wrong with them.
Market value vs cost of getting it fixed.
Yup - the price of the bits, especially electronic bits; new parts + labour can easily cost more than a car is worth which is a bizarre state of affairs considering we're supposed to be recycling and saving energy and resources.
Si
Physically maybe. In most cases it's replacement parts that cost more than the value of the car. ECUs in particular.
Too right - would you prefer to spend your money on a shiny new car or on a little black box with electricall connector that gets your old car working again.
Too many of the automotives are almost 'giving' their cars away, only to make the profit supporting the vehicles during their life.
B*stards!
Artie
It's quite astonishing how little money cars (many with plenty of life in them) fetch these days. ISTM that the auction is the place to go, particularly if you're willing and able to do a bit yourself if it turns out to be necessary - getting any parts from the scrappie (who prefers to call himself a "dismantler"). My local auction (2 evenings a week, 100 cars each session) seems to get more than half of its cars from local distributors who automatically send there all trade-ins they've taken for less than £1.000 - where they're put up without reserve. Some evenings it seems they can't *give* apparently-decent cars away! There's a list of car auctions below, but my local one (Milton Keynes, Wed. & Fri. 6-00pm.) isn't listed there.
Conor ( snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :
Yup.
Silly little stuff - a couple of tyres, maybe a suspension bush and a broken light lens, a leaky heater matrix.
I'm probably unusual in preferring the latter these days. I know I can't afford brand new, so I'd rather stick with my "known quantity" which has had all the necessry work done, than a used car which might need just as much spending on it again.
The clutch.
120K mile cambelt change on some cars (V6's). Higher end cars Group 16+ insurance + high fuel comsumption + other running costs etc. becomes very undesirable in lower cost 12+ year old market unless they are something special.Or simply they got a newer car and no one will buy the old one.
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I'm with you on this Chris.
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