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 can sign a petition to stop this;
https://www.change.org/p/patrick-mcloughlin-save-the-classic-cars-from-he-scrappage-scheme?recruiter=224891126&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=mob-xs-share_petition-no_msg&fb_ref=Default
please please please averyone do this!
What a travesty! Rather than crush them why can’t they remove a few parts (e.g. a bumper, a wing mirror, an aerial etc.) and sell the car on as parts and spares and include the removed parts in the boot? And for those cars too far gone..don’t crush them…Surely it’s more sustainable to sell those parts for old car than have new ones manufactured.
All these cars are just even more rare than before but they was already rare
Sneaked?
I suppose we could just steal them
Or chain our selves to them
When i saw the minis…
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO WHOS UP FOR A HEIST WE NEED THE MINIS AND ALL OF THE OTHERS JUST SAVE EM
Or a real life Italian job use some minis to steal some classics?
I don’t care that I’m not British, I’M SIGN THIS FREAKING PETITION!
I actually feel like crying….
I hate this system. We had a family friend once who got a classic Triumph Dolomite Sprint with an automatic gearbox (which was rare for that car). It was a barnfind and barely ran. My Dad and another friend of his however spent months working long hours restoring the car to its former glory for him. At the other end it was a great example of a Dolomite Sprint.
A few years later the scrappage scheme rolls out. Our family friend didn’t give a sh*t about how long my Dad and his friend spent on it or the fact he had a rare automatic model. He scrapped it regardless of how much my Dad tried to talk him out of it even when telling him he could get more for selling it second hand.
Funnily enough he got a KIA with the money he got.
We don’t talk much to him now.
Sounds like another terrible plan that happened about the same time here in the US. If you thought finding parts for you classic was hard, the government just made it exponentially harder.