The Government has laid out its budget for 2009. Among the changes affecting motorists are:
- £2,000 scrappage payout scheme gets the go ahead
- Fuel duty up 2p-per-litre in September
- Fuel duty up 1p-per-litre from April 2010 for four straight years
- No changes to car tax
- Expected announcement on electric cars didn’t materialise
Will the 2009 budget have an effect on your choice of car and your driving? What’s your reaction to the budget?
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16 Comments
April 23, 2009 at 8:31 am
The £2000 scrappage scheme is not enough, a large percentage of the population can get nowhere near the price of a new car & this simply is not enough given the premium we pay in the first place. The reason why there are so many 10+ year old cars on the road is because the majority can only afford sub £5,000 for a new one & tend to hang on to them.
If the government really wants to make a difference to the car industry & Co2 emmisions then offer the £5,000 discount on cars like the Honda Insight bringing the cost down in the region of £10k, this should prove popular to city drivers & if successful push other manufacturers to follow suit with technology.
April 23, 2009 at 8:41 am
….Oh & I should add, because you must have owned the car for at least 12 months & that they have put a 12 month cut off to this scheme (ending March 2010) this will stop people going out & buying an old banger for >£500 & cashing in.
April 23, 2009 at 10:58 am
This scheme is absolute nonsense.
£2000 towars a new car, for your old banger?
How do they expect people to pay out and extra few thousand on a new car? We are in a recession, money is like gold dust at the moment! Yer lovely thought tat we can get 2 grand but i dont think they considered the fact that people most prob wont want to for out even more money than buying a half decent car for 2 grand.
I love my car to bits, she is a Pug 205, M reg, so 15- 16 years old, with only 58 thousand miles on the clock. I would dearly love a new car but at the same time, just cant afford one. Plus can’t borrow money as most places have tightened their belts, just like majority of public have had to do!
April 23, 2009 at 11:05 am
This has not turned out like I thought it would. The Chancellor offers £1000 for scrapping your old car (plus another grand form the destitute manufacturers) and then says you have to buy a new car thus immediately giving himself a 15% return via VAT on the vehicle chosen. On a £10k car, £1k out and £1.5k back. Nice work Alastair!I was hoping that it would be a £2k voucher issued by the DVLA after you’d scrapped your motor which you could then use to haggle at your local dealer for either a new car or one up to a year old.
April 23, 2009 at 11:27 am
Really disappointed by the scrappage scheme. We own two cars over 10 years old, a Primera and a 528 BMW. Both worth about £1000 trade in. Both work well and frankly are not worth scrapping as we have owned them for between 5 and 10 years and know them both well. However would have traded up.
But
a) as the car companies have to fork out £1000 then any discount is illusionary and will get adjusted in their offer. So
b) My car is worth £1000 (several recent trade in offers) so all I am doing is taking a perfectly good car off the road and swapping a trade in for a scrappage amount.
c) If I have to buy a NEW car to qualify, rather than a 1 year old one then the extra cost (which is about 30% of the value of the car) is completely wasted.
d) If I get a new car what do I actually get – a car that has been siiting in a field for the last 6-12 months as no-one has been buying them and there has been over capacity creating pointless stocks.
e) If I spend £10-12000 on a new car that is £12,000 heading for one industry rather than supporting various industries. It is also incraeseing my borrowing and given how interest rates will rise in 2-3 years’ time I will get heavily penalised later and end up paying out the £1000 in excessive interest costs.
Overall pointless.
April 23, 2009 at 11:44 am
I wonder if I could buy a new car on behalf of another person, save £2k by scraping my old car and then sell it on to that person – splitting the £2k saving. Is there any feasible way of doing this?
April 24, 2009 at 9:12 am
Fraid not, looks like all those loopholes were closed right from the off. New car needs to be in your name, with a recent MoT and tax, so old bangers knocking around on your drive don’t count, and you can’t use your £2k to gift someone else either. Pah! Cant even sell your good car to anyone, as the deal runs out in March, and the offer requires 12 months ownership too…
Hmmmm….
May 23, 2009 at 7:57 pm
I have a fully MOT’d / Taxed 11 year old car which i need to sell. I wondered if there was any profit to be made in buying the smallest cheapest car (Kia Picanto) via the scrappage scheme and then immediately selling this new car. Would i make more than the £200 the car is worth if i sell elsewhere?
Any thougth appreciated
April 23, 2009 at 11:50 am
Good idea in principal, but the execution is very poor, as explained above £2000 for a your old car and then expecting you to go and get a brand new one is silly, the reason people have an old car is because they cant afford a new or newer one, I’ve had an alfa for the past 3-4 years, it cost almost nothing when I got it, drinks fuel and is fun, its a 98 model 1.8 and has had 1 problem to fix, £2000 for that would be awesome but I’m not going to be able to save enough as well and get a new car, why should I pay another £3000 £4000 maybe £5000 to have the privilege of a brand new, small, naff to drive car with a warranty that pollutes a little less than mine, when mine works perfectly fine, and I own it and won’t have to worry about repayments for the next 5 years, I know it drinks fuel but its the best that I can get, its ludicrous, I might consider this idea if they expected me to get a car that was maybe 3 – 5 years old, I think Mr Darling needs to try and work out his sums using an national average wage of up to £18000 max (and that’s being generous) and figure out how people are meant to own a house, have families and then splurge on a new car just to make them feel better about the environment when it is not there responsibility!!!!
If cars are such a burden, give us something real to work with.
April 23, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Sir, the chancellor did create a make belief discount for older cars but has he ever thought why car manufacturers fail to sell their cars. Firstly the increase in prices for them when in the olden days one could buy a car at a nominal price which included extras like embelishers etc etc and two tone colours, making the car look more attractive and lure the customer to buy. Secondly, the prices of fuil has soared by the pounds, yet the the government keep promising to bring down fuel prices, but when?.
April 23, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I have serious reservations about the scrappage scheme, but regardless of this, what are autotrader thinking of with the list of 30 popular models eligible to scrap? Obviously someone just typed into google “Photos of cars over 9 years old”, some of those cars are absolute classics or are economical affordable runabouts that are already in short supply. What we should be seeing here is Vectras, Meganes, Lagunas etc. Things like old Sierras & Cavaliers have all but disappeared already. Autotrader need to decide where their priorities lie, and recognise who their customers are, at the end of the day they are an advertising company not Motor Trade professionals.
April 24, 2009 at 11:41 am
I total agree with you tim.this scrap scheme is the worst thing that happen to motor trade. this scrap scheme is not go to benfit the small garages and cars sales if anything it is go to make them worst off and may ever be kill off some garage and cars sales.autotrader should be try to help small car sales.after all this small car sale are the people that keep them in business.this scrap scheme is also go to hit the first time drive hard as well because most of this first drive want the old car durring to there fact there are cheap to run and cheap repair and tend to have less need to be repaired.
April 23, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Good idea if you are a MP on a large salary with “benefits” the rest of us can only dream of.
Anyway the 2K should be available from the DVLA /or some other department on proof of scrapage using the newly printed forms.
Most folk running about in a 10+ year old car will not have the cash or inclination to waste hard earned money on a brand new car which is well overpriced in the UK and will only be worth perhaps 30 to 38% of its original cost in 3 years time.
Car manufacturers may be having a hard time getting dealers to sell their cars but the worst of it is there are thousands of cars lying around in fields waiting for someone to take them to a good home and once VAT is increased to 20% then those cars are going to be obsolete by the time they hit the dealers’ showrooms and the rust marks are resprayed and the underseal refreshed to hide rust spots and the average bod is not going to have enough free cash to buy one and the 2k scheme has become part of political history.
For the time being I’ll still be running about in my 11 year old Subaru but maybe I’ll take up the 2k offer if it is rewritten so that a person could buy a car up to 24 months old.
April 23, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I think the incentive scheme is a great idea in principle and I was hoping to take advantage of getting a new car which I otherwise couldn’t quite afford. However, you have to have a valid MOT on the car you want to scrap – mine’s just failed, hence wanting a new car. If I have to pay for the repairs to get it through the MOT just to get it scapped, I may as well keep my old car! I’m exactly the sort of person this scheme is targetted at but it’s flaws mean I probably wont be able to use it.
April 24, 2009 at 9:09 am
Its a pity purchasing a bike isn’t one of the options, afterall it’d fit within the greener means of travel we keep being told we ought to use. Mind you, £2k would buy quite a good bike, maybe thats the problem! Also, less congestion on our roads if we all took to two wheels…
A great political point scoring opportunity missed me thinks
June 7, 2009 at 7:11 pm
My nissan micra P reg is 12 year old. I bought it on 12 June 2008. Its MOT expires on 9 June 2009. Sadly it had failed MOT and the garage estimates £240 to fix it. So, I will have to spend £240 on car which will live for 3 days as I intend to apply for the new car under scrappage scheme on the 12 June 2009. What a waste of money. I think the government should relax this rule. This is a total nonsense.