£2000 !!

[Skull]

If they were really into "green", they would give you £2000 for you to implant a LPG device.

[GazzaG60]

I mean, who the hell drives around in their 1996 Rover .

well that will be me then.

[Ross]

well that will be me then.

And are you over the moon that it is now affordable you can trade it in for a discount off a spanking new replacement?

Or are you going to carry on driving it regardless, because it's cheap and reliable - without depreciation...

[GazzaG60]

think i may keep it. its more reliable than the audi. also manchester to wolverhampton return for 15 quid.

in all seriousness when have the gov ever released a scheme to help us. and even if it does help us this year. how about next.

what happens when the number of cheap affordable cars with no carbon footprint as its already been produced dry up to an extent that either they become more costly to buy due to demand for cheaper motoring or motor factors start to NLA parts as they dont sell um.

[newsh]

but I had a Chicken Madras yesterday.

Thats funny so did I

[anton]

i have to say that with all the negative comments on here about how flawed this system is, few comments have been made about the benefits. i dont think for 1 second that Audi expect you to be happy with £2k for your A1 condition S2, and even if you were, i'd bet you'd see it outside their showroom in a weeks time rather than a scrapyard. this is only applicable to old non-classic cars, such as my 80 TDI. also dont forget this is not Audi's scheme, this is a government scheme, dedicated to getting the dirty 'unsafe' old cars off the road, one that i am all for! my 80 does 60mpg, but that doesnt make it clean, its CO2 is mentally high. as for the £2k figure, its 2k as an incentive and it works too! i'd definately consider a new audi over a second hand one if i can get 2k knocked off. and if it doesnt suite you then thats bad luck, ****** i know but helping some is better than helping none. besides if only 100 ppl get benifit, the tax payer only pays for 100ppl.
a couple of people have also mentioned that you cant buy a small car with this scheme, unless this is something one of the car manufacturers have put into effect i'm not sure thats correct, it cirtainly didnt say that in the budget report i looked at on yahoo, so it should give me 2k off a 15k A3 if i ever decided to do that.
i think this is a good scheme, it will reduce the number of lower safety and less green cars on the road, its aimed at helping first time young buyers.
as for the making a new car cant be better for the environment then yes your right, i can only hope this is the first step to be folled my the old cars being recycled my the original manufacturer rather than scrapped but for now i think it is a good first step.

I think i should add however that i find Audi's policies on older models discusting, and am fully behind the NLA fight. however i think everyone is using this scheme as a scape goat, this is not Audi getting rid of their heritige it it the British government working for safer and greener roads.

right, flame suite engaged....

Ant

[Ross]

I think you could be one of the few people that will make good use of the scheme Anton, but it's still a flawed scheme that will have lots of administration costs and won't make as much difference as they're selling it with. You won't see a straight £2K off the sold price.

This is certainly no scapegoat for the NLA issue to me, that aside it's still a waste of time and money. Could have done more for less IMO - like a straight VAT free period on cars, now that would have been an equivalent helping hand without all the BS surrounding it...

[Beetie]

because it's cheap and reliable

This is a rover youre on about yeah?!

[stiglet]

Ant, you're forgetting a few vital points here.

1. Your old car WILL be scrapped regardless of condition.

2. It's not environmentally friendly. Yes, your TDI puts out a large amount of CO2, but so does scrapping it and then producing another car. Plus your new car will last approximately 5 years, when you will be repeating the whole process again. Manufacturing processes will not improve or become more environmentally friendly in that time.

3. It will take old cars of the road, which gives manufacturers less incentive to help maintain older cars if there are less of them.

4. The kind of people who will be trading in are people who probably couldn't otherwise afford a new car, so they will most likely be buying using credit. That's the exact thing that got us in this mess in the first place FFS!!!!

5. Define "unsafe". If you mean, generally not having airbags, ABS, passenger/pedestrian safety Euro N-Cap etc etc etc then yes, I agree. However, surely it depends on the make of car? Your TDI is safer than a brand new Kia Cee'd SW. Period. Considering the scheme will only accept the cars which have a current MOT, so have to be roadworthy too, it's not really making the roads all that much safer considering the margin of deaths that occur every year due to the cars involved in accidents being unsafe.

6. People will loose more than 2k in the first year of depreciation, so this scheme saves nobody any money in the long run. Did I mention we're in the middle of an economic crisis?

7. It's up to the manufacturers which cars you are allowed to buy. They may or may not let you buy a small car.

8. It won't help first time buyers because they will have needed to own a 10 year old car for a year already. Johnny "just passed my test at 17" will still have to go out and buy an old, cheap to run and maintain car. Oh wait.... no he can't. They've all been scrapped! Oh well, I guess Johhny boy will be 6,000 pounds in debt instead when he buys his first saxo on credit.

That's just off the top of my head. I think the only real benefit here is the safety point. But to be honest, there are far worse problems with drivers today than what comfort bubbles they are currently driving.

Did I mention this is a really f**king terrible idea and I feel insulted that my taxes are going towards this?

[anton]

i dont think the condition of the car has any impact on the situation either way really, as for the green, i'm not too sure about it really, but the idea is to put new cleaner cars into the hands of people who otherwise would just keep buying older cars, if they keep this new car for say 5 years i would have thought that would easily cover any production emissions but i dont want to get into some green debate as that isnt the point of the scheme its to get the cars to be safer. i'm going to have to disagree with your point about a ceed or whatever being safer than the audi, whatever way you look at it, new cars are deffinately safer. but either way, the purpose is an incentive to buy new cars, getting the old ones off the road is mearly a side benefit to them. simitar schemes in Germany have shown an increase of 40% in car sales since last year compared to our 30% drop. yes i agree that perhaps a vat reduction or similar would sell more cars but the main people to benefit from this would be the higher earners. i know its not a perfect solution but i think its still a very sucsesful and proven method of improving car sales and jump starting the automotive industry.
i acept the points about depretiation ect but those cost are there anyway; if we want new cars to be build (which IS what we want as this is reason for the industries problems). this is just their way to give people that extra insentive to face that depreciation and aftert the dust settles you have a hole bunch of dirty old cars off the road and replaced with clean safer cars.
as for loosing Tax payers money, the americans chose the other option which is to just bail them out, i think this is a far better option, simply because the tax payer gets somethig out of it...thats effectively a new car for 6 month old prices. also out of interest every car manufaturer i have seen is overing the highest insentives on the cheepest of all their cars....

Ant