scrappage & end of the road for my 9000

Quite ridiculous idea to crush such a nice car, unless the gov deliberately wants to cut off the supply of parts. Poorer countries of the world are not so darft. They happily run 50 year old cars and have tremendous skills in fixing them. And for those green freaks, they even modern engines into them.

Anyway, you should certainly put it on ebay as parts. As I mentioned here a while back, I was lucky to get a complete front door with everything on ebay after a stupid accident when I reversed into a pillar in an underground car park.

What colour is your car?

I'm not sure how it works in the UK, but here in the USA there are plenty of folks with ramp trucks who will come by and pay you cash for any car to get the steel for scrap. You can strip most anything like lights, interior parts, engine accessories, etc - they just haul it up on the ramp with a winch and take it away.

One of the largest steel recycling plants in the world is in Wales and I understand they have to use over 100 "local" recyclers to feed their shredder's 400+ vehicle per hour appetite. Perhaps they could direct you to a firm to come haul your car away and pay you money.

That said (and again noting my ignorance of UK laws) you could also sell it, or the remaining "it" after you do some stripping, to someone for parts.

me gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

No problem with any of that here, but the government's currently offering a £2,000 discount off any new car in return for scrapping one pre-99 that you've owned for 12mo or more.

Except, as always with government discounts, it isn't quite what it seems.

It's £2000 off the LIST price only of a BRAND new car, not pre-reg, ex- demo or slightly used, or off the discounted price. It's not even £2000. It's £1000 from the government and £1000 from the manufacturer. And, let's be honest, that grand's going to be on the table anyway. It's not even £1000. The dealer has to do a chunk of paperwork, documenting the scrapping, in return for it.

So we're actually talking about £800 or so, in practice. Which is a lot less than you could save by buying an ex-demo, pre-reg or ever so slightly used one.

And you would also get a discount of at least £1000 from list price anyway, so the dealer contribution is really nowt.

And as someone pointed out, it's unlikely that you would have a worthless banger if he can afford to buy new. As far as I've heard, most of these purchases are small cars. I wouldn't mind a Nano since you could get it for free, by courtesy of HMS guv.

johannes gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

I was talking to the dealer principal of a very large dealer last night -

They're getting about the level of interest in the scrappage they were expecting - it's increased business a bit - BUT his personal view is that it's the wrong cars being traded in.

The people trading cars in are tending to be older, and the cars being traded in are mainly one-owner, low mileage and very, very tidy. They're cars with a LOT of life left in them. And, of course, the sheds remain on the roads, because they're the ones owned by people who couldn't even contemplate that price jump.

What's wrong with it ? I was still driving a '93 2.0 LPT until recently and it had little trouble ever with MOTs ( aside from when the back box needed replacing and then the rest of the exhaust inc catalyser fell apart in sympathy

- THAT was expensive ).

Graham

-- due to the hugely increased level of spam please make the obvious adjustment to my email address

Kind of predicable really. It shouldn't have been a 'blanket' scheme with decent cars getting scrapped.

Graham

-- due to the hugely increased level of spam please make the obvious adjustment to my email address

yes it hurts me to scrap it ... and I think the government scrappage scheme is misguided (though convenient) however, I am no longer able to work on it, no longer the main driver, it requires several things (exhaust sections, brakes, ball joints, cv gators, battery etc), and most importantly SWMBO wants a newer, smaller, less thirsty car.

It was a great workhorse for the last 180 odd k miles -

-best car I've ever had - and if it was solely up to me I'd probably still pay the bills on it ... (though we are getting to the point of diminishing returns) but as I've hinted - I've been over-ruled. :-(

Agreed. Maybe introducing the "MOT failure" aspect or something, so that decent older cars that have lots of life left in them are encouraged to be kept on the road. How many miles does a modern, low carbon footprint machine have to do before it has a lower output compared with an older machine. Essentially, those people who are able to buy a new car are simply being encouraged by the "easy discount" factor. So plenty of 15 year older, larger cars are being chopped in for 1.0s to be used for the city. That's great for the VAT revenue and in theory it'll reduce local pollution in cities.

But like so much "green" tax incentives, they're all about tax revenue hashed up in concerns for the environment.