SO THEY'VE FINALLY DONE IT – they’ve turned the scrappage incentive from rumour to reality. Oh dear...

   Understandably, we’ve been keeping an eye on this one because this sort of ‘initiative’ really does threaten our movement, our classic car industry, encourage terrible wastage and it means that you, the taxpayer, is subsidising a largely foreign-owned car industry.

   Think we’re being a bit jingoistic, a bit OTT? Well, these last two points don’t come from us, but from a scrapman in Germany – a country which already has such a scheme in use. It makes for very interesting reading at:

[Read more at BBC.co.uk]

 

   All of which leaves us with a problem – do we try and tackle the might of the government machine, the contemporary motor media and the motor industry or do we do something else more pro-active?

   The classic motor industry has to be protected, because unlike the motor industry, Britain is still a serious player in the manufacture of parts and the provider of services. Indeed, the weakening of the pound has led the industry to prosper to such an extent that the Financial Times has reported on this growing multi-billion pound trade. Read this for more information and for a dose of much-needed good news:

[Read more at FT.com]

   Unlike the scrappage incentive, the classic trade encourages people to recycle cars which have already been made. Their pollution and CO2 figures are history and we cannot do anything about them, and to us, it seems madness to scrap perfectly good old cars (creating more CO2 and pollution) and replace them (creating more, well, you get the picture) with a product which will not have the same long shelf live.

   Don’t believe us? Well, how many successive generations of car followed the Morris Minor and where have they all gone? All those Marinas, Maestros, Montegos, Rover 213/216s and 200/400s have all vanished.

   Therefore what we believe, and what we hope you believe too, is that retro and classic cars are worth preserving and they need saving from people who are willing to scrap solid cars for a few quid of blood money.

   We need an incentive to save classic cars and we would like to see the rolling 25-year deadline for the free historic road fund licence classification re-instated. Old cars’ environmental impact is minimal – that’s why activists recycle old buses, coaches and ambulances for their transport – but the pay off is the preservation of jobs and the encouragement of a booming industry. And by George, do we need more of these!

   Please do sign up to our six-month petition at:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/save-old-cars/

   We believe this to be a horrible waste and because of this scheme’s potential to damage British industry, this will represent the first part of
Dep-O’s ‘Great British' campaign where we’ll do our best to champion our home-grown retro-classic industries.

   Already Germany’s similar scheme is starting to hit classic car numbers: “We have reports from Mini Mania in Germany, one of our longest established Mini specialists, that their scrapping bonus has had an impact on the German classic Mini population, so it is a concern,” says John Yea from British Motor Heritage Ltd, one of Britain’s leading classic car companies.
  
   Once you’ve signed up please do tell all your mates about this because otherwise, come March 2010 – when the scrappage incentive ceases – thousands of retro classics will have been crushed and cubed.