Before everything in this country was shut down last week, the greenest car to purchase was
one nearest to where you buy it whether it's new or old! That'll take the wind out of the sails
of every Totally Pius owners

Andrew

i dont care if its green or not........its my xm nobodys having it........wouldn't part with it fer a new car anyways......i don't know of a new car that has the comfort /ride/ economy for size...etc etc etc..........come near my baby and i,ll set my two chuhauhas on yer. (hers actualy but they listen to me thank god....viscous little buggers)......(dogs not missus but saying that......................

In our local paper it said the idea was to offer UP TO £2000. So does that mean to get the real deal you have to be spending circa £15000? There's zilch chance of me going into that much debt to buy a new tin box.

"tin" being the operative word here. at least the xm has never been refered to as "tin" unlike many many other rustboxes

For years I've thought it was time that all car manufacturers were made to stop developing new models.

I can hear the screams already.

But, instead of bailing them out why not take them over, make some payments to shareholders to keep them quiet and insist that the companies develop vehicles that will last forever. Then factories would just make spare (and recyclable) parts.

We're about as far forward as possible in energy efficiency, creature comforts etc. Why spend billions continually pushing forwards? How many cars do we need on the roads?

Hi just picked up on this thread
This week i was told of annother goverment proposal to go with the trade in one seemingly the goverment wants to register all cars between the historic (free tax) group (pre 1973) and 9 years old as classic and restrict them to 1500 miles a year and charge the owners £400+ per year road tax for the privilage to drive his car on the road
The proposal for the scrapping for cash of 9+year old cars took annother turn also in that in their wisdom they want all these trade in cars to be crushed which will in effect cut the supply of second hand parts to the diy motorist,
The wording i heard was it will be better for the enviroment to crush these cars than have them laying about in yards polluting the ground,
All this is being done to help the ailing uk motor industry as there are pretty mutch no british owned car makers left in this country and most cars are imported as a whole or in kit form and just assembled it will not help any uk tax paying companys at all it seems that all of us older car owners will be paying to keep a dead industry going in other countrys.
Rant over

Mick

Unfortunately it appears to be turning into good old protectionism and closed shop unionism by the back door.

The public will be forced to pay for new cars.

I also can't see much environmental benefit with respect to Co2 output.
Take an XM 2.1 diesel and a current 2.2 diesel.
The fuel economy isn't very different due to increased vehicle weights and reduced engine efficiency, due to lowering of compression ratios to reduce Nox output and smooth rough running of direct injection engines.

IMO we should be bothering about fuel efficiency/Co2 output, but as long as vehicles can achieve sensible limits then leave them to run.

In reality most older vehicles do much reduced mileage anyway so the proposal isn't well thought out.

If you need to cover 20k per year, just buy 14 Xm's...or don't fix the milometer when it goes dodgy

Scrapping cars at 9 years old would deprive a very large section of the west country of their transport. The wages here are such that a large number of people just cannot afford new cars. If you look in the supermarket car parks many are 'N' reg or earlier. There are also many pensioners down here who can only just about afford to run a car. I can't see the government getting much support for such a strategy.

Peter.N.

When will someone in the media point out that it uses loads of energy and hence CO2 production to produce a new car (and to scrap an old one) not to mention the use of natural resources like metal, oil for the plastic etc. Scrapping a perfectly good car to make a new one is equivalent to many 10s of thousands of miles of use in terms of environmental impact even on an older less economical engine.

The green thing to do is to buy as economical car as you can find that fits your requirements and then run it for as long as you can.

And someone tell the idiots round here that a tall box with a large frontal area is far less efficient that a shorter more wedge shape with smaller frontal area and the same no of seats, capacity, weight etc. It is simple physics.

But then, we don't bother teaching such things properly in schools these days so who is going to notice, and what really matters is that the fashion statement is correct.