Hundreds Of Amazing Modern Classics Are Waiting To Be Crushed And It’s Illegal To Save Them
BMW E24s/E28s/E30s, classic Minis, Jaguar XJSs, Porsche 924s, 944s and 928s - all can be found in droves sitting on a disused airfield in Bedfordshire. Some probably won’t take much to get back to good working order, all will have valuable parts, and none of them can be touched.
We’re talking about the results of the UK Government’s 2009 scrappage scheme, which enabled people to trade in their old car to be crushed - so long as it had a valid MOT - to get a £2000 discount on a new one. The motivation was to breathe some life into the then-troubled UK car industry, and replace old, polluting vehicles with much cleaner new ones.
The problem? Many of the 392,227 cars scrapped simply did deserve to die. A full list of the cars taken off the road for the scheme was published a year and a half ago, and while that was depressing enough then, seeing images of a lot of the cars in question is pretty hard to take. Thousands of vehicles have not yet been crushed, and an urban explorer recently snuck into a disused airfield in Bedfordshire where many are kept, posting what he saw on Facebook.
While you look through the set - and this additional one here - just remember: by law, these cars, many of which will have been perfectly roadworthy upon arrival, have to go to the crusher. Not a single part can be saved. And all so a bunch of people could get a moderate discount on a boring econobox (apparently Kia did quite well out of the scheme…).
Given the explosion in classic car prices over the last few years, a lot of the vehicles you see here gathering moss and rusting away have become extremely valuable, making it seem like even more of a waste. But there is something we can do. A petition has been launched on Change.org, calling on the government to auction off surviving cars to the public, or at the very least saved for parts. It could end up being futile, but for the sake of a few moments of your time, it’s damn well worth trying…
Source: Pistonheads
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
you could easily sell most of these for way more than 2 grand
F**k the police
i’ll risk my life for those beautys
If I ruled England I would have made everyone buy a car from the scrapyard and whoever doesn’t buy at least one will be drawn,hanged,and quartered.
And the destruction of the crushers by make it crush each other after crushing all Priuses
Well then export those to lanka
You cant do this……. WHYYYYY!!! R.I.P
the thing is that today, most of these car worth more than a 2009 KIA.
You can still steal them lol.. at least that’s why I just bought tickets to bedford
The issue with all of the places that did the scrap your car for a bunch of money on a new car is it was intended to kick start auto sales again. In the end most of the cars that were traded in were worth more than the value given for them.
The real shame (as much as I love the types of vehicles traded in) is the environmental impact of this. Instead of saving perfectly fine vehicles we are going to “recycle” them. It takes energy to break the vehicles down and then turn them into a new car and it’s shameful how much waste the end result really was. At the bare minimum they should be selling off the part.
If I sign this petition from outside the UK will my signature mean anything?
We will need nos. No two bottles of them at least