Latest Government Wheeze. Spelling?

According to today's news, our beloved government is considering 'encouraging' motorists to trade in their old cars for new cars. Reasons given are new cars "better for the enviorenment" plus it's an attempt to kick start the U.K. car industry (most of which is foreign owned anyway). How would they do this? Go the Japanese route of making the MOT so extreme that anything over three years old stands little chance of passing it? Using some kind of reverse Road Tax so if you have a car less than three years old, the government pays YOU once a year?

Making cars (irrespective of age) with anything above a set emision level pay an extremely high road tax, such as adding a xero after the present level?

Finally, is there a spell checker hidden on the XM forum? As you can see from the above, I definately need one

It may have changed, but the last I read was that the plans are :

1) Pay people to trade in their old cars for a new one. £1000 when you trade in a car over 7 or 10 years or similar to buy a new efficient one. (the traded in car is then crushed).

And in a later suggestion:

2) Put a ridiculous road tax charge on anything over 7 (or was it 10) years old - many hundreds of pounds per year.

3) Put a mandatory maximum annual mileage on anything over 7/10 years old - a couple of thousand miles or so.

So, firstly why should I trade in my reasonably economical old car that has already paid back the environmental impact of it's production for a new one that will have a huge environmental impact for it's production in order to gain a few mpg that will never offset the production impact in the 7 years I am allowed to own it?

And secondly why should I have to pay to prop up a motor industry that is in some cases privately owned and in all cases has been living in an economic bubble for a decade and squandered the money it made in that time with no thoughts for the fact that the 'status quo' was not sustainable?

Oh, and on the spell check front there are a few options:

Firefox has one built in, and some other browsers like Safari may too.
The Google toolbar has a spell check built in if you are using IE, and there are probably other plugins to do it as well.

In both cases it does the usual trick of underlining anything that is not in it's dictionary, and right clicking give suggestions etc. Far more usable than anything the forum software is likely to do even if it had one.

If these aresholes go ahead and do what is discussed here, I will be staying in France, and moving all my old cars over here and to re-register. They can't possibly enforce such things.

Hmmm... I wonder if you can re-register them in France as a UK resident and then use them permanently in the UK. I expect the insurance wouldn't allow it even if the rest of the rules did.

Your opinion/information is extreme, with all due respect. Or rather you have no idea how the Japanese MOT (JCI - Japan Compulsory Inspection) works.

Hi Robert

When your XM's next MOT is due make sure the car is in France and put it through a French CT test on the grounds that you cannot get a MOT out there and the car is due to be checked for safety to continue using it. Then when you bring it back with its 2 year mechanical fitness certificate ask Swansea to recognise it after all we are all EU. Complain to the French if the UK refuse to accept the French certificate.

John

Very interesting John. I have never thought of that. Although by rights I should have the car re-registered here, but it costs about £350 to do that, by the time you pay for a certificate of conformity (£150-200), buy the carte grise (their V5) (£98) and do the Controle Technique (£50). I have the head lamps already echanged for LHD ones so thats another £50 to add to the total if starting from Fresh.

I know that the French won't accept my UK MOT certificate instead of a CT certificate to register it. So imagine the DVLA won't accept a French CT. Its bloody daft since the European Union tries to harmonise so much legislation etc between member states.

The good thing about the French system is that you don't have to pay road tax like we do. You pay for your carte grise when you buy the car, €200 approx, €100 if the car is over 10 years old. The MOT lasts 2 years, and you can still drive your car even if you have to get a re-test. On the otherhand their used cars and spare parts are very expensive. So its a question of trying to strike the balance.

I am very tempted to register the car here, so I don't have to pay £185 in road tax each year.

Hi Robert

Some while ago I got talking to one of the casual workers in the unit next to mine. It was the fact that he had a French registered RHD 2.1 Mk1 XM estate that set the ball rolling. He was originally from the UK but lived in France most of the time so had reregistered his XM mainly because of difficulties with keeping the car on UK insurance. He said the change was very easy to do for a french car but he failed totally despite much negotiation with his non french motorbike. I think he said that as the XM was a French built car then exported that it was already registered on their system by its VIN so did not require a certificate of conformity.

I understand that the EU is currently pressing the UK to comply with one of the standardisation directives which would force the MOT to change to line up with the CT.
No doubt this is one of the issues where the UK is fighting tooth and nail to oppose change as not one of us can possibly want 2 year MOT's of French style tests.

John

[QUOTE=Jan-hendrik,Mar 21 2009, 10:00 AM]
Your opinion/information is extreme, with all due respect. Or rather you have no idea how the Japanese MOT (JCI - Japan Compulsory Inspection) works.

Re Japan. Not extreme at all, I'm just passing on what I've been told by someone who's been there. I've also been told that although 3 year old cars with average milage sell at low prices, a lot are poorly maintained. Why spend money on something you're going to throw away after 3 years?

When you compare U.K. MOT requirements now with what they were 20 years ago, then 10 yeaars ago, it's a steep line on a graph. If it continues like this, how long will it be before even if a car is well maintained, maximum permitted emission levels will be lower than a 15 year old XM engine can manage, no matter how well it's tuned. LPG is a possibility to reduce emisions on petrol engines, but what about diesels? [/QUOTE]

This post has been edited by combwork on March 21, 2009 10:30 pm

[/QUOTE]Re Japan. Not extreme at all, I'm just passing on what I've been told by someone who's been there. I've also been told that although 3 year old cars with average milage sell at low prices, a lot are poorly maintained. Why spend money on something you're going to throw away after 3 years?[QUOTE]

Total BS. I've lived in this country for more than 40 years, so I should know that it is. And I hate to say that you should not pass on what one individual 'who has been there' told you without verifying the facts. It is exactly this kind of practice that spreads and perpetuates misinformation and myths.

This post has been edited by Jan-hendrik on March 22, 2009 12:02 am

What are the Japanese testing procedure / rules like Jan?

Someone whose sister lives there mentioned something to me about there being a regulation that cars over 10 years old must have their entire braking system replaced? Is this true or total hearsay?

Ciarán

Total BS. I've lived in this country for more than 40 years, so I should know that it is. And I hate to say that you should not pass on what one individual 'who has been there' told you without verifying the facts. It is exactly this kind of practice that spreads and perpetuates misinformation and myths.

Fair enough; if you've lived in Japan you're knowledge is greater than mine. As to "verifying the facts", again all I can go on is what I've learned not just from one individual 'who has been there' but what I've read in two car magazines (one 'Practical Classics'; can't remember the name of the other). Anyway, to cut to the chase; do you know how the JCI compares to the UK MOT? I don't, so if you can drop a pearl of wisdom my way I'd very much appreciate it......

Oh by the way; ease up on the "Total BS". I know and trust the guy who's been there; I don't know you. Do you know what you're talking about? I've no knowledge of who you are or where you've lived but frankly I don't care. The general point I was making is that as the MOT/JCI tests get more and more severe, sooner or later there'll be a cut off point which no matter how well an XM has been looked after, will put it off the road.

On an interesting (but related) aside, I came across this earlier.
Suppose that's one way of getting round the eventual 'old, evil, polluting' car argument they will inevitably put forward.

I had heard of companies in England doing that, but never seen one before. The one benefit I can see initially is the smaller size of the HDI engine seems to leave a fair bit more room to work round it, which can only be a good thing
It does look unnaturally lost in the bay of an XM, but I daresay even the smaller bored HDI lumps have the equivalent / more power than the old XUD / XU counterparts. Just a pity they don't seem to have half the longevity or simplicity, seemingly having being engineered with the new plastic-fantastic throwaway car culture in mind...

P.S - Also notice his 'Justin Casey' strut top accessories

Ciarán

This post has been edited by Ciaran on March 22, 2009 03:51 am

You are right, I got carried away. I apologize.

Concerning the JCI, there is a lot of info on the net. You might want to Google it. But here also the provided data is not all correct, or hard to understand.
The fees for the Inspection at the Land Tranportation Office, a government run facility that regulates and controls vehicle registration and testing, is only 1100 yen + the charge for using the testing facility. Users themselves can take the car in if they are confident the car will pass. I have done that many times. The reputed high cost of the JCI is not due to the dealer or mechanics making a fortune. In fact they are not and charge a lot less than their counterparts in the EU. The largest expenses are the compulsory liability insurance and the weight tax.
From this year I decided to leave all the necessary work to the dealer. For the recent JCI, which for my vehicle is carried out every 2 years as it is older than 3 years, the charges were as follows:

Insurance for 24 months 22,470
Weight tax (2 years) 50,400
Registration fee 1,100
Line testing (prefecture) 10,500

Dealer charges:
Basic inspection 27,000
LHM bleeding (2 ltr + labour) 6,600
Processing (take car to test centre, etc) 12,000
Total 130,070

Furthermore road taxes are levied, which are due annually in May. For the XM this is 51,000.

In addition to the compulsory inspection, vehicle owners are strongly advised to have inspections carried out at least once a year and most owners do that as failure to do so is not only irresponsible and dangerous, but will void any warranty. Therefore vehicles whose first JCI is due (after 3 years) are generally in very good condition. A windscreen sticker attests to the test having been carried out.

AFAIK the government here is not designing any policies (yet) to force older cars off the road. Emission standards are not applied across the board but are tailored to the year of manufacture. So the criteria for my 2000 XM are a lot stricter than the Traction Avant or DS I took in for inspection some years ago.

Again I am sorry for the tone of earlier postings.
If you have any specific questions I'll do my best to answer them.

***I keep amending this post, sorry.***
The recommended annual inspections are not carried out at a government run test centre, but at the dealer's. The fee is around 12,000 yen. The car is hooked up to the computerized diagnosis system and visually inspected inside and out.

This post has been edited by Jan-hendrik on March 22, 2009 05:04 am