Scrappage Scam Extended

Lum said:
Kev isn't going to get approved for a finance deal and even if he could, he couldn't keep up the repayments anyway.
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Another issue is that he probably WOULD be approved for credit and then not keep up the repayments. Remember that post about getting people in debt?
 
Lum said:
I'm not claiming that the other guy (lets call him Dwane, if you like) doesn't benefit from the scheme, my issue is what happens to his hold car.

Pretend you have a 18yr old son, lets call him Dave. He's just passed his test and has saved up a grand of his own money to buy his first car, prior to the scrappage scheme, Dwane's car would now be on a dealer forecourt "part-ex to clear" and Kev's would be for sale privately, on paper they're the same, both have a reasonable amount of tax&MOT left and so on, however Kev looks a bit dodgy so Dave buys the other car. Unfortunately that car, that perfectly good serviceable and not too unsafe car isn't available. So he has to buy Kev's car

This is his first car, the one he is probably going to have a crash in. Now when he does have his crash, that is when he is going to discover that the sills are rusted through and have been replaced with chicken wire and bodyfiller, how is he going to know, because the sills will snap in two and the car will get crumple around him as the sills will be weaker than the crumple zones built into the car (yes they did have crumple zones in 1999).

If Dave is lucky, his new car will fail it's MOT before he has an accident and he will have only figuratively lost an arm and a leg rather than literally.

Meanwhile the only crumpling Dwane's old car will be doing is in a compactor machine.

I realise there will be more than two cars on the market at the time, but all the Dwanes in the country will have scrapped all their good cars and all the Kevs will be offloading them privately onto unsuspecting buyers such as Dave.



But the oldest, least reliable, least safe and most polluting cars will still be there, and will probably be killing someone. This scheme is literally putting lives at risk.

If they wern't forced to scrap perfectly good cars I would have very little issue with the scheme. It's a government bailout just like Obama did only this version actually does help consumers and not just big businesses.


How about instead of scrapping the good cars, the cars find their way into the income support and job centre schemes. If an unemployed person is fully qualified for a job with the exception that they cannot get it as they need to own a car for the job, or to commute to the job, a scheme where they get Dwane's old car for, say, a tenner a week interest free providing they take and keep the job that is offered. If they quit or get dismissed for something that is their fault before the car is paid for then the car is taken back. A similar scheme could work for those on low incomes / income support.

This would be a much better use for those old cars, it might even get Kev's deathtrap off the road if he qualifies for the scheme. Ovbiously this only works for the more mundane cars that come in, the exotics could be auctioned to fund the public purse ie. reducing the overall cost of this scheme to the taxpayer.

But, I hear you say, who decides what the value of what cars are and which are worth preserving, well luckily it's car dealerships who take in the scrap cars and they usually have experienced car salesmen and mechanics on staff. It would be a requirement before the dealer get's it's £1000 of government money that the car be sumbitted with a report detailing the car's mechanical condition, estimated value and suitability for re-use.


Personally I beleive that this isn't happening because the government want to poison the second hand market, they want to get poor people off the road, it'll make the roads look less congested without them having to actually spend any money building new ones or paying for more traffic police to educate middle lane morons.
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Despite my rising confusion over Dave, Dwane, Kev, Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, I grant that you make some good points in relation to this proposal failing to get death traps off the roads. However, desirable though this objective undoubtedly is, it was never the intention of the scrappage scheme.

I don't accept that all of the cars getting scrapped are "perfectly good cars; my scrapped car was structurally sound but had no air bags, ABS or other safety features and was developing a significant and expensive to fix engine problem as aresult of which it was probably going to require some expensive maintenance shortly - according to the local dealer from which I bought it 15 years ago.

I particularly like your idea of using skilled but unemployed mechanics to check over and where possible to fix "old" cars. Sadly I suspect that this would fall down on three grounds
  • they would need access to facilities and equipment
  • I suspect that the motor trade would not be entirely happy
  • surely skilled, competent mechanics find it fairly easy to get work anyhow?

I really don't think that the Government want to "poison the second hand market" or to "get poor people off the road"; I think that that is paranoia kicking in. I do think that what they do want to do is to support the motor trade and it seems that in this at least they are being successful.
 
stockhausen said:
"Perhaps because there are likely to be at least as many "unknown variables regarding reliability" with a ten year old car as with a brand new one. The significant difference is that a new car will be covered by a warranty.
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LostPhil said:
Sure, 2 years of "trouble free" motoring must be worth what, £4,000 plus depreciation, over what it would cost to keep their current car on the road for that... [/Sarcasm]
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It's a false economy - the warranty will not be worth that much in comparison to the financial outlay unless you currently drive a complete money pit. In which case an older, more reliable car is a far better investment.

There is NO financial benefit to doing this.
 
LostPhil said:
It's a false economy - the warranty will not be worth that much in comparison to the financial outlay unless you currently drive a complete money pit. In which case an older, more reliable car is a far better investment.

There is NO financial benefit to doing this.
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In the case of the Hyundai i20, the warranty is for five years, so personally, I am laughing :)
 
stockhausen said:
I don't accept that all of the cars getting scrapped are "perfectly good cars; my scrapped car was structurally sound but had no air bags, ABS or other safety features and was developing a significant and expensive to fix engine problem as aresult of which it was probably going to require some expensive maintenance shortly - according to the local dealer from which I bought it 15 years ago.
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You could get ABS and airbags 20 years ago, admittedly as options on most cars, but the lack of them does not make a death trap. I bet you I would be more likely to walk away from a motorway crash in my old 940 (no ABS or airbags) than, say, a modern Smart ForTwo

I particularly like your idea of using skilled but unemployed mechanics to check over and where possible to fix "old" cars. Sadly I suspect that this would fall down on three grounds
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No, I said that the dealer taking in a car under scrappage would be obliged to use their salesmen and mechanics to submit the car to the government along with a report as to it's suitability before the government gives them their £1000

I really don't think that the Government want to "poison the second hand market" or to "get poor people off the road"; I think that that is paranoia kicking in. I do think that what they do want to do is to support the motor trade and it seems that in this at least they are being successful.
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The government want less people driving for whatever reason, whether it's OMG Carbon-bloody-dioxide, congestion, or something else. They have publically stated plenty of times that they want to see more people give up their cars and switch to public transport, yet have consistently failed to bring public transport up to scratch to make people want to use it so if you can't make people want to use it, all you have left to do is force them, whether this is by over-zealous speed enforcement leading to a ban, rising costs in the form of fuel duty and tax increases or now by reducing the supply of good cheap cars for poor people. Either way, they're removing the poor and the lower echelons of the middle class from the road.

I don't deny that this scheme is a benefit to the motor industry and the upper-middle class, but that doesn't mean it can't further the government's agenda in other areas too. Despite what you may think of New Labour they are most certainly not idiots.
 
Kappa said:
Another issue is that he probably WOULD be approved for credit and then not keep up the repayments. Remember that post about getting people in debt?
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Pretty sure the banks have stopped giving out big loans and mortgages to the unemployed these days having been bitten quite badly by it and causing a global recession.
 
Why did you drive around in your dangerous old car for so long stockhausen? Not many people still drive cars with no airbags. It seems odd that somebody with your level of concern for safety was one of them until so recently. You are atypical of scrappage customers, most were wealthy enough not to drive a complete nail. Indeed by insisting on an MOT and over 12 months ownership the scheme actively excludes the worst of the old nails....
 
Robbie G said:
The only thing that can be concluded from any discussion on the scrappage scheme, is that most people think it's a bad idea, but will never agree with those that believe that they have benefited from it.
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That's not really true, I would bet nearly everyone that has bought a car under the scrappage scheme believes they have benefited from it. In the same way that audiophiles (audiofools) buying solid silver mains cables for their amplifiers think they get some benefit from it.
 
Nobody is disputing that people benefit from it merely protesting at the forced destruction of good cars. The sort of thing that should only happen to properly end of life cars such as 6 year old Hyundais.
 
Of course some people are benefiting from it, not as much as they'd think but they are benefiting from it. The government contributes a grand and the dealer makes up the rest, however the dealer aren't contributing the other £1000+ out of the goodness of their hearts, they are getting it back in some other way, most likely through interest on a finance scheme because lets face it anyone who owns a 10 year old average econocar probably isn't going to be buying their new car in cash. This has never been in doubt.

It's just the destruction of perfectly good 10 year old cars that is the issue here.
 
Lum said:
...
It's just the destruction of perfectly good 10 year old cars that is the issue here.
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And this is making a wild, unsupported assumption and generalisation.

Do you have any credible, independent sources to support your apparent assertion that perfectly good 10 year old cars rather than unreliable, unsafe, polluting, unwanted cars are being scrapped?


ps - I will accept that the Volvo 940 is a very safe car, if a bit of a gas-guzzling tank . . . . and apparently not as safe as the Renault Modus:

​

;)
 
stockhausen, be honest with yourself here, of all the people driving around in 10 year old cars eligible for scrappage, which ones do you think on average are more likely to be the ones that deserve to be scrapped.

The ones who have been owned and driven by someone who has £5k to spend on a new car, or the ones that have been driven by people who couldn't afford a new car?
 
Kenai said:
stockhausen, be honest with yourself here, of all the people driving around in 10 year old cars eligible for scrappage, which ones do you think on average are more likely to be the ones that deserve to be scrapped.

The ones who have been owned and driven by someone who has £5k to spend on a new car, or the ones that have been driven by people who couldn't afford a new car?
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I genuinely wouldn't want to speculate. Do you have any credible, independent sources that analyse what cars are getting scrapped?

I can only really speak based on my own personal experience and I have to say that I am quite happy that I have replaced a relatively unsafe, increasingly unreliable and expensive to run 15 year old car with a new Hyundai i20 that comes with a host of safety features and I am quite relaxed that my old car will be taken off the road and not driven by some 17 year old hot-head.
 
stockhausen said:
In the case of the Hyundai i20, the warranty is for five years, so personally, I am laughing :)
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....which doesn't cover consumables, only "manufacturing defects" according to the website.

You'd be very unlucky if you had non-consumable bills amounting into the thousands over 5 years average motoring on a 10 year old car. Hell, mine's had the head gasket replaced, cam belt (even then, that's a consumable) and now the starter motor which will total less than £1k over 3 years motoring in a not particularly well looked after car.

At least I'll have a hoot driving mine whilst knowing that my £2k outlay has been far more economical than buying a new characterless car under the scrappage scheme.
 
stockhausen said:
ps - I will accept that the Volvo 940 is a very safe car, if a bit of a gas-guzzling tank . . . . and apparently not as safe as the Renault Modus:

(5th gear crash test thingie)

;)
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You realise Renault paid 5th Gear to do that test. There's a lot of rumours going around that the test was arranged in such a way as to make sure the Renault would win.

I don't really see how you can complain about unprovable generalisations when the entire basis for the argument is that people with barely enough money to live on are less likely to maintain their car properly compared to people who have enough disposable income kicking about that they could buy a new car. I'm talking about the kind of people who would find themselves in a situation where they can either replace the completely knackered rear shock absorbers on their car (70 quid on my Volvo for the two shocks alone) or feed their family for the week, but not both.
 
stockhausen said:
And this is making a wild, unsupported assumption and generalisation. Do you have any credible, independent sources to support your apparent assertion that perfectly good 10 year old cars rather than unreliable, unsafe, polluting, unwanted cars are being scrapped?
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Do you have any sources for your opposing view that they are not? Common sense and knowl.edge of cars supports my view - why would the average 10 year old car be as you describe? 10 years is hardly a long time.

Why are we the only ones who need a source to support a logical argument whereas you need nothing to support yours?

As for your i20 I am away this week with only a phone. I would appreciate if you could simply tell me whether your specific i20 has ESP.
 
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