The forgotten losers of the scrappage scheme

With older dirty cars being pulled off the road for good and the stimulation of the car market universally accepted as extremely positive for the car industry, we are left thinking about the forgotten people who can only afford – or want to drive – a ‘cheapy’?

For decades people have decided that they would rather spend their hard earned shillings on their houses, children or themselves and the thrill of buying the latest new car or even spending more than £1,000 on something that just gets them from a to b isn’t felt or leaves them cold.

These people usually only choose to change their car through absolute necessity and the realisation that the choice of budget priced cars is being diminished, or at the very least suddenly becoming a lot more expensive, can be at best mildly irritating, for the ones that can afford it but just don’t want to spend the money, and at worst a complete nightmare for the single parent or student who has just been told that their old Renault 5 that’s worth a pocket full of change needs £400 to get it through an MOT. The fact that they can afford neither the MOT nor a scrappage scheme replacement leaves many drivers in an invidious predicament.

It is very difficult, as a car blog, to understand the possibility that there are people out there who just don’t care about cars or the dynamics of the trade the way we do. It stands to reason that the ever changing landscape of the motor trade just passes them by and so they are probably left bewildered by the fact that the circumstances of their personal transportation just got a whole lot harder.

So as they also probably won’t be interested enough to be reading this piece anyway, should we care that they will probably struggle to buy a budget car now that more than 400,000 potential candidates have been scrapped and removed from the market place and the choice continues to diminish on a daily basis?

Probably not in fairness, but if we find a way of overcoming this problem you can be sure you will be the first to know.