16 replies to this topic

[Aria Aradhea]

Forgive my ignorance, because I'm not in the UK... but here in my country the price of Minis are extraordinarily high!!

For a 70's Minis in good condition, you can expect to spend at least £ 4,000 to buy the car. £1 = Rp. 18,000 by the way... and £1 will give you a 1,5litre Coca-Cola bottle with some change...

The typical price for a Mini here is around £ 5,000 and the price for a rust bucket is around £ 2,000! So you can imagine how pricey the Mini is here... An early 90s Mini could even cost up to £ 8,300! The price tag is much, much hgher than say a VW Beetle!

It's kinda sadden me a little bit to see a Mini going to a scrappage when they could be worth more than what the scheme offer...

Sorry if I offend you, UK citizens...

[Mini-Mad-Craig]

If you trade in an old car, Mini for example, then you get £2000 of a new car. Its silly

[sazal]

Its a scheme to help out car companies in the recession. Loads of companies over here have had to hault production as they werent selling enough cars due to the money situation, so lots of people were losing their jobs. The government started up the scheme with the car companies to encourage people to buy new cars to the production lines started up again.

The scheme means that if you have a car over 10 years old with MOT and tax and you have owned for over a year then you can trade it in and get £2000 despite the condition off a new car. On most cars its really good, but not so for the classics that have lost their lives due to it.

The scheme is only going on for a few months, so hopefully not too many good cars will be lost

[Ethel]

We don't understand it either. There's just been a story in the news about a big stink over the German scheme because "criminals" are shipping traded in cars to Africa instead of crushing them.

[xGAME-OVERx]

i read the other day that half the allocated government money is gone, and its only been running since like may, assuming the rate that people are taking advantage stays the same itll only last another 3 months

[jaydee]

Man, i can understand you..im currently living in italy, paid an arm and a leg for a 998 mini with a moon and back mileage and still looking for a mainstream cooper, tehy become rare and lower prices are about 3 grands..well, here theres a silly scrappage scheme and they'll give you up to 5k euros (i guess they give you a 5k 'discount' only if you're buying an hybrid fuel car). The result is that most classics in road worth conditions are being scrapped...

[redhotmini]

fingers crossed it wont last long, as the new 58 reg plates are out on 1st september, and so far this month we have pdi'd 30 new cars, 19 of which are on the scrappage scheme. theres loads more to come, i think they have sold 53 cars for september delivery.

[Aria Aradhea]

I can understand that in order to keep jobs, steps must be take to ensure the public buys products... It's just saddened me that it seems the classic Mini, of any year, is not considered classic enough for (some) people to hang on to...

Here, it is estimated the number of Minis ever exported is only under 1000 cars, so it is an instant classic and during the past years, the prices of the cars have increased exponentially. Is it because Minis are just another "common" car over there?

[sazal]

They're not a 'common' car, but theres still quite a lot of them around!

[benb12]

I suppose the reason some people in the UK would trade in their Mini under the scrappage scheme is because they bought the car purely as a means of transport and have no real attatchment to the icon, probably older drivers.

Anyone heard of the Americans' new scrappage scheme? They have to destroy the engine by draining the oil out of it and filling the engine with sodium silicate, then revving the engine until it siezes because the sodium silicate stuff practically turns to glass. It's to make sure the "gas guzzling" engine isn't used again in another car. I don't see why they can't just crush it though.

[Bungle]

in this country the government are really pushing recycling and energy efficiency

so they have come up with a sceem to get people to get rid of a perfectly good car and trade it in for a new car that takes more energy to produce that the old car would take to run for the next 10 years

[Shifty]

I suppose the reason some people in the UK would trade in their Mini under the scrappage scheme is because they bought the car purely as a means of transport and have no real attatchment to the icon, probably older drivers.

Anyone heard of the Americans' new scrappage scheme? They have to destroy the engine by draining the oil out of it and filling the engine with sodium silicate, then revving the engine until it siezes because the sodium silicate stuff practically turns to glass. It's to make sure the "gas guzzling" engine isn't used again in another car. I don't see why they can't just crush it though.

Is it just me or does doing that sound like fun?

[jaydee]

I don't see why they can't just crash it though.

Because they're american..it would have been too much easy and its much funnier to blew it.

[jaydee]

so they have come up with a sceem to get people to get rid of a perfectly good car and trade it in for a new car that takes more energy to produce that the old car would take to run for the next 10 years

Youre so right..but they have to help economy, their just looking at the car market imho.

[Ethel]

Minis have always been a special case in the UK. They've always sold quicker, and for more, as 2nd hand cars because they are cheaper to run than anything else. For the same reason they were usually older and in a worse condition when they finally made it in to a breaker's yard. Our government has a troubled history with the UK motor history. We went from being one of the world's major players to an off shore assembly plant for foreign manufacturers while the government poured a fortune in to a failing nationialised giant. No wonder they've lost all interest in our motoring heritage besides, they've moved on to banks now