Cash for Cars

[B-8-D]

Mar 13, 2009 22:13:13 GMT Team Blitz said:

That's the spirit, boys!

Accept defeat as inevitable! Yessiree!

This from the country that ruled the oceans, defeated Napoleon, and won the Battle of Britain?

WTF?

tbh i often get get anoyed at your attitude on here, wityh the things u say.
then i realise you are just trying to wind people up and just laugh.. ;D
but this statement has for me hit the nail on the head!! well done..

over here (the uk) we do just take it in the rear rather than standing up for what we believe in.
and its about time we stood up to be counted!!
si

[richy]

When I was working at the SMMT 12 years ago this scrappage scheme was being bandied around, but fortunately went away. I'm now concerned that this scheme could get legs, but interestingly when I asked an environmental consultant to the SMMT about re-engineing old cars with more modern engines, as opposed to buying a brand new car, he couldn't give me a truly straight answer!

Said he thought a brand new car might be slightly more green, but couldn't give me a straight answer about how older cars are easier to repair, easier to recycle and less likely to be written off because of that ease of repair: thing is, i had the feeling he really knew nothing about running/maintaining a car of any age....

[ThePollitt]

Ahhh, it's all happening again.

I see I was mentioned, thanks! And yeah, I am firmly of the belief that we should just get on with it and enjoy what we have. The sad thing is, I'm only of that belief because the notion of standing up for what is a passion of mine seems pointless.

It's very easy for people like us to think that we have some sort of clout, but the sad thing is, we don't, at all, not even a little bit. We live in our worlds of forums with shared content, friends with similar interests and lives which are closely linked to our passion, so for us, it's hard to compute the notion of our argument falling on deaf ears.

For every one of us, there will we a hundred people who see a car as nothing more than a white good, a disposable item that should renewed as fashion sees fit, or, occasionaly, as function sees fit.

If this is something we all believe in so smuch then we need to try to get our point across. We're sitting here, almost in shock, with a shared agreement that this scrappage scheme is only there to try and save an industry which has over-saturated itself from greed, and is now trying to use those 100 for ever one of us as a moral scapegoat via the liberal use of the word green.

It's working for them though, isn't it? The car companies are winning, they're suckering the punters in, chopping in perfectly servicable cars. And why? Because they, the manufacturers and clever marketing people have duped them into thinking they are doing something nobel and good, something, sigh, green. The thing is though, if they had the correct education they'd see sense, even the folk who struggle to remember what their own vehicle is.

People, as a whole, are NOT interested in cars. They're interested in carbon, green, environment and money. And if we had a big enough voice, I reckon we could generate quite a lot of interest...but sadly, we don't.

Chris

[Blown_Imp]

What happens to all of the cars that get traded in?

Do they get scrapped?

[ThePollitt]

Mar 14, 2009 13:29:47 GMT Blown_Imp said:

What happens to all of the cars that get traded in?

Do they get scrapped?

Brown bread mate.

[useless inc]

I agree you can't save them all and in the end some cars do come to the end of their natural life.
If they do introduce the scheme then it should be when the car comes to the end of it's life and not to help a car dealer sell a new car.
Should a 1999 Mondeo with 43k on it be scrapped? Not really as it still has a a few years of service left in it for someone.

Would it not make more sense that if your car failed it's mot you could take the failure certificate to dealer and use that to get your £2000 discount? The discount should then only apply to a car that produceds something like less than 180 g/km of c02?

This would then let the general public get a discount on the new car when their old car was done and replace it with a more eco friendly model.

I can't agree with you on not bothering to object to it or discuss it.

[popuptoaster]

The unions did a lot of disagreeing with the govenrment in the 70's and 80's and nearly bankrupted the country, the government STILL didn't listen to em, much as ui'd like to try i doubt theres much we could do against a "green" policy however dim it is.

[ChasR]

Mar 13, 2009 21:13:50 GMT useless inc said:

It's win win for the dealers as the government pays for the the 2 grand discount they're giving off the new car.
The thing is people are going to have to take credit to get these new cars. Is this not part of the problem we're in just now?

It's amazing how good a 10 year old + daily you can get for about £1000 now without life crippling finance.
I give you Nissan Primera GT, Merc 124's and BMW E39's.

I agree with that. It's stupid really. I would like to think that consumer is wising up, but it appears that this may be halted.

As for E39s for £1k, it wouldn't be too great for that money (hell, the X300 Jags are barely touching that mark for something that works fine) and you forget that they cost £30k+ back in the day, they will still had high running costs.

We will have to see how the wind blows I guess with regards to this cash for cars situation.

[grumpybadger]

You can only trade a car for discount if you've owned it for 12 months so that prevents people buying £200 cars solely for the reason of trading it in.
Also people who drive 10 year old cars usually do so because they either A, can't afford a new one (as said the dealers will reduce the discount so you end up paying the same regardless) or B, they see no reason to spend money unnessesarily.
Both reasons will be as valid with the scheme as without it and besides it'll be no different to last year when scrap prices were high and most main dealers wouldn't try to sell on a car that old these days anyway.
I don't see it as a threat, though I do see it as a giant waste of tax payers money.

[rmad]

Am I the only one who can see the difference between whinging on a forum and actually doing something?

You can talk about it here or you can do nothing - either way I suspect you'd have exactly the same effect. What you need to do is start a protest, arrange a rally, get voted for in a election or something.

I'm locking this thread and sending it to the whinge bin...you can choose your reason from those below:

a. Threads like this achieve nothing.

b. Instead of reading the thread people can go and do something pro-active to fight the issues.

c. It's boring.


I'm making a stand. I won't be fooled into thinking scrapping my Cressida will save the planet and therefore I won't trade it in and buy a new car. I suggest the rest of you don't trade their cars in either. Simples. ;D