I've got an old Sierra on the drive. It's been sat there for 14 years ever since the engine expired and I couldn't be arsed to build a new one for it. It's quite handy for general storage though with the boot full of scrap aluminium cylinder heads waiting to go to the scrap dealer and the inside full of sundry crap I don't want in the house. It's attracted bugger all attention from anybody in most of that time.
The current rise in scrap steel prices is driving the local vultures crazy though. It's up from about 4p a kilo to 24p a kilo in the last year for decent sized chunks of metal with a 50% rise just last month. Even thin sheet like car bodies is about 170 quid a ton.
Last weekend on the Bank Holiday Sunday it was an Irish bloke in a suit offering me 50 quid knowing full well he could get three times that at the scrappy. The week before that it was two kids who couldn't have been older than 14 or 15. The week before that someone who not only hammered on the front door but when I didn't answer that went all round the house banging on every window. I only have to look at who's knocking on the door now to say "no I don't want to sell the bloody car" before they've had time to open their mouth.
You'd think it was a pile of diamonds on the drive from the attention it gets. I live in what's supposedly the most affluent area in the UK but even round here the prospect of a few quid in the back pocket from a mug who doesn't know what his scrap car is worth is enough to have these people flocking round in droves. How the hell many of them can there be out there? I tell each one of them to piss of in no uncertain terms so they won't come back but new ones just appear like fleas on a dog's arse. I'm beginning to think the entire economy round here is based on scrap car values.
Dave (very pissed off) Pumaracing.co.uk