29 September 2009 - 14:00
Labour extends scrappage scheme
Business secretary Peter Mandelson has announced that the UK's scrappage scheme will be extended to cover an extra 100,000 cars.
The initial £300 million government investment earlier this year - expected to last until March 2010 - is set to run out early next month.
As the government pays half of the £2,000 scrappage bonus, with the other half stumped up by the dealers and manufacturers, the £100 million top-up announced by Lord Mandelson this week will extend the scheme to another 100,000 vehicles.
The British car industry has campaigned hard for an extension to the scheme, which has been widely vied as modestly successful in stimulating new car sales. It was feared that next January's rise in VAT would have hit dealers hard, a blow that the scrappage scheme top-up should go some way to offsetting.
In the US, it has been revealed the similar ‘cash for clunkers' has seen Americans scrapping a host of classics, including a Bentley Continental R, Mercedes C43 AMG, Maserati Quattroporte and an Aston DB7 Volante.
If you've heard any similar stories of Brits destroying perfectly fine classics in exchange for, say, Hyundai i10s, let us know using those comment-box-thingies...
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Trust me, those 'scrapped' supercars will wind up in some politician/bureaucrat's driveway. No one in government over here is so law-abiding that they'll let a free supercar go to the crusher. Nobody in this country hates cars that much.
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I hate how the government claims they're 'helping the car industry' when in fact this is single-handedly culling the entire second-hand car industry. Second-hand car dealerships and traders can't sell anything anymore, and if they do it's for sod-all money. Typical Labour, going to bed with the bigger corporations.
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And to give you an idea, I bought a perfectly good Mazda RX-7 FC earlier this year. Low miles, runs like a german clock, perfect nick, for £900. It's worth more than that in scrap! Rotary engine, goes like stink, and it's more reliable than I am. I did 560 miles (lincoln to exeter and back) in one day. The car was fine but I was shattered! Much better than a £10k Toyota iQ.
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Mikeado commented on this article
29 September 2009
Damn those tasteless money-grabbers! The Americans, I mean. I bought a new car recently, but instead of buying a new, expensive car for ever-so-slightly less, I got one second hand instead. My £1000 discount was due to a clerical error rather than steam rolling a classic Mini :-P
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