Government urged to save old cars

To launch its ‘Great British’ campaign, Dep-O magazine – Britain’s first retro classic e-magazine – is campaigning for the reinstatement of the Historic road fund licence’s 25-year rolling deadline.

This comes as a direct response to the economic crisis and the effects the recently implemented ‘scrappage incentive’ will have on the retro classic car movement and its supporting manufacturing industry.

Whilst this scheme will have little effect on established pre-1973 classic cars, it could decimate numbers of older cars which, had the rolling deadline still been in force, would now be officially recognised as classic cars by the DVLA.

“Jeremy Grant’s article in the Financial Times underlines the value of the classic car industry to UK PLC,” says Simon Charlesworth, co-editor of Dep-O. “In 2006, it was worth £3.2billion, and given the sizeable increases reported in the FT this will have grown considerably. It’s no wonder that John Spellar MP described one classic car specialist’s success as ‘a beacon of hope in the recession’.

“Yet, the scrappage incentive threatens the industry’s very long term survival and the UK cannot afford to lose any more of its dwindling manufacturing base. Just look at last week’s news, when BAE Systems announced the closure of Britain’s last tank plant.”

Germany runs a similar scrap scheme and this has created concerns about the waste of crushing serviceable cars in the German scrap industry, which have already been reported by the BBC.

In addition, John Yea from British Motor Heritage Ltd, one of Britain’s leading classic car suppliers says: “We have reports from one of our longest established Mini specialists, Mini Mania in Germany, that their scrapping bonus has had an impact on the German classic Mini population. So it is a concern.”

“In the short term, the scrappage scheme will do no nothing for people who are really hard up, other than artificially inflate the cost of old cars – via diminished supply – and subsidise more affluent new car buyers. In the long term, numbers of retro and future classic cars will be hit,” says Charlesworth.

“Most of the remains of Britain’s motor industry are under foreign ownership, so why should the taxpayer help these companies out at the expense of British industry – to me, it doesn’t make sense. Currently estimates suggest that a hefty £300 million will be spent on these subsidies.”

Restoring or recycling older cars leads to far less waste and obviates the need for newer cars with shorter operational lives. Yes, certain new cars are more reliable and less maintenance intensive, but they are vastly more expensive to run and maintain – particularly following the introduction of modular assembly.

“Now, five or six year old cars can be written off because of the cost of a failed wheel bearing. Once this would have cost £50 or £60 to replace, but because these units are now incorporated within wheel hub assemblies with Anti-lock Braking System sensors – these can now cost up to £400 to replace – it isn’t cost effective,” says Gerard Hughes, co-editor of Dep-O.