Recently the UK government announced a scrappage scheme, whereby you can scrap your old car and get £2000 or more in return for buying a new car. The theory behind this is pretty straightforward, incentivise people to get their old, unevironmental cars off the road and at the same time stimulate the UK car market. Simple.
Of course although many people have jumped at the chance to get this ‘free money’ the reality is much more complex. It looks as though some car dealers put their prices up on the new cars that they then ‘reduce’, meaning you can save more money from just buying a car without trading in your old clunker. Not so good from a money standpoint. And from an environmental perspective, the strict scrappage rules define that any car over 10 years is worth scrapping – but is that necessarily the case? Are we just creating more landfill from the unrecylclable parts of a car rather than learning to maintain what we have – a much more green approach to life.
Either way the scrapage scheme is here with us for a year at least, so make your own mind up. As for us, well our car isn’t quite ten years old – even if we did have enough spare cash to buy that new Ferrari I need for my pre-mid-life crisis. Mmm… red.