A new scrappage scheme would be crushing

In the wake of the last global recession of 2008, the British Government followed the lead previously taken by other European countries such as France, Spain and Italy to help prop-up the motor industry with an older vehicle scrappage scheme incentive to tempt motorists out of their older cars, and buy new, more ecologically-friendly vehicles. This initiative saw UK new car registrations grow by a healthy 28 per cent in the midst of a recession, but at the expense of many rare and sought after older vehicles being permanently destroyed.

The regulations of this previous 2009 car scrappage incentive enabled a new car buyer to trade an older vehicle (aged 10-years plus, which they had to have owned for more than 12 months, and with a valid MoT), to receive £2,000 off the price of a brand new car, with half of this amounted contributed by the Government.

Fast forward to today, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis, and the British Government is under unprecedented pressure to get the UK’s population and businesses spending again to rapidly grow the Country’s economy, which the reintroduction of a car scrappage scheme could arguably contribute towards. A discount of up to £6,000 on a brand new electric or hybrid car only (excluding all new internal combustion-powered vehicles) was rumoured to have been seriously considered by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak but the huge cost implications, lack of charging infrastructure and concerns that scrapping perfectly serviceable older cars is not environmentally sound, with around a fifth of a car’s lifetime CO2 pollution being created when the vehicle is built, being important consideration factors within Number 11.

Hagerty’s extensive research into the pros and cons of reviving a UK car scrappage scheme found that almost 400,000 older cars were destroyed as a direct result of the 2009 scheme, virtually removing an entire generation of machines that would now be 21-year-old-plus classics. This initiative has subsequently had a major impact on the collectors’ car scene, driving the prices up of the few surviving examples of this ‘lost generation’ of motor cars, with consistent annual value increases of 15 per cent or more (a once commonplace Ford Sierra Cosworth now fetching £155,000 at auction, for example!).  

During the last UK scrappage scheme, a number of the cars being destroyed had negligible value at the time, but due to their low survival rates, many have now become desirable classics, with their scarcity reflected in their current values, as illustrated in the chart above, with a now-rare Audi Quattro 20V, scrapped at the time for example, now worth around £70,000 today, according to Hagerty’s classic car valuation experts.

As car enthusiasts, the prospect of many of the now considerably cleaner 10-year-plus cars we are all used seeing on our roads being needlessly destroyed bring tears to our eyes, with potential ‘future classics’ such as the BMW M3, Ford Focus RS, Abarth 595, Mazda MX-5, Jaguar XK, Nissan Cube, plus countless others, deserving to be spared the crusher!