My car is nearly four years old. I have a Megane Sport. It’s a petrol head dream and I love it. I bought it on PCP, so have to make a decision. Changes in my personal circumstances mean that my decision to get rid of it and buy a sidecar outfit have been put on hold for a bit. Having hardly used the car for most of its life, suddenly I have need of it. One option will be to refinance it for a couple of years. I’d rather do that than use capital.
So today, the dealer phoned me to ask what I would like to buy. I told him that I was keeping the car. The best he could offer me was a hybrid Clio, given that the Meganes are all EV now. Indeed, Renault no longer offers an ICE, merely some hybrid models that aren’t a patch on my RS. He admitted that during discussions with his sales manager, the phone call would probably be unproductive, given that they have nothing that they can offer me that would not only be practical, but would replace the vehicle that I have. If Mrs L was still alive, she would be deeply disappointed at the current options of offer.
So, I’m keeping what I have. Renault just lost a customer. One that is not going to come back, because I am not buying an EV. Going by the conversation, I am not the only customer reacting like this. Sure, they are going to meet their government set targets by not offering ICE vehicles. But that’s not much good if people won’t buy what is on offer. I’m certainly not. After around forty years of buying Renault cars, the time has come to walk away. I haven’t left them, they left me.
Yes, I’m sad. Mrs L loved her sporty Renaults. And it’s all over.
Same at Mercedes. In a couple of years the A and B class will be discontinued. All that will be left is the SUV ranges, sports, upmarket saloons and EVs. When I went in to change mine I had to tiptoe past all the EVs to get to the ICEs at the back. Limited marketing in order to not put forward ICE vehicles, that way they stand a better chance of meeting EV targets. Weird. I got a GLE450d, despite the hideous 1st Year VED tax theft. Superb engine, long range, but they are predisposed to offer EVs instead. Feels like economic suicide to me. All that investment in superb ICE wasted in pursuit of politically driven subsidy money / latent threat of sanction.
If the proposed fines of £15000 per vehicle if the manufacturer doesnt achieve a rising percentage of milk float sales, comes into effect I won’t be surprised if some manufacturers pull out of the uk market entirely. Personally i’m happy with my petrol 2.0l automatic mazda. As i do most of my in town journeys on a bicycle or e bike my mileage is low and at the current mileage i’ll be scrapped before the car.
On youtube, I automatically skip ads of course, but if it’s a car ad, I do wait a little bit.
For these, it is getting as surreal as everything else. Indeed, more so.
At least you do see the occasional white person in ads. I suppose the wonders of enrichment do need knuckle dragging dullards to highlight the improvement.
But car ads?
Real cars have been vapourised – in the Orwellian sense – totally and completely.
As an exercise in pure waste, Goldstein himself would be in awe. The sheer numbers of unsold and unsellable milk floats that are piling up. These incendiaries literally cannot be given away.
The greedy, subsidised virtue signallers must be all used up now. Car rental companies are dumping milk floats faster than nazi party member cards in 1945, and the number of those who combine the requisite stupidity/naivety and wealth – the only actual customer base left?
My Korando is twelve years old and has around 96k on the clock. Still reliable and drives perfectly well so I intend to keep it for as long as I can. What usually prompts a change is the MOT failures starting to cost more than the car is worth. If, in the future, the only replacements available are EVs then the goalposts will have moved. Yeah, don’t care what it costs, just fix it.
My Father in Law has a 2003 Renault Megan. He’s in his eighties now and doesn’t really want to have to learn his way around a new car, especially one that’s loaded with a great load of pointless tech.
Correction, FILs car is a Scenic.
That’s why the price of used cars has gone up so much these days. Your decision alone has just increased the resale value of your car, as more and more people who refuse to own EVs, are looking to buy older ICE vehicles
I’ve never bought a car on finance, owned one younger than ten years and rarely had one with less than 100k on the clock. Cars I would have been buying for 4-600 quid six years ago, are now priced at over £1k (Same car, same year, so should have gone down).
I paid £1500 for my current car, and it really was worth no more than £800. I have to keep it now and get my moneys worth, as it’s becoming more difficult to find older cars worth keeping on the road, for a sensible price
Seen elsewhere is the suggestion that the EU will ban the repair of cars greater than 15 years old. If true it is of course outrageous but probably unworkable. Do they think people especially in eastern europe won’t just cheat? Maybe we need a repair shop at the chunnel UK side to fix any continental car that can make it over? What about the classic car business?
I think my existing cars have more miles to go than I have, but what if they ban petrol?
Renault leapt too big and too quickly on the EV bandwagon, they deserve to lose business.
I’ve only ever owned one Renault, a mid-80s 25 V6 Turbo, outrageous engine, un-developed embryonic electronics, horrendous fuel consumption, a monster to maintain, but very comfortable, a rocket-powered armchair really.
Despite launching the first hybrid with the Prius, keep an eye on Toyota, they’ve never followed the EV crowd and their CEO maintains that EVs will only ever get to 30% of the market, Toyota wants the other 70% – they deserve support for that.
19 year old Landcruiser here, still rock solid (i’m a DIY rustproofer) and totally reliable so far as have been all my large Toyota 4×4’s since the 90s, it’ll probably see me out.
No doubt it’ll be banned from cities in due course, good, can’t stand the bloody dumps.
SWMBO has a turbo Forester, 16 years old and still rust free, we were planning to replace that with a 3 year old Corolla hybrid estate this year.
However changes at work means i might be retiring in which case we’ll only need one vehicle, which might mean running the old Landcruiser into the ground instead, SWMBO likes driving it and its probably the best dog carrier short of a pick up.
I’m not having a bloody battery car either, have no interest in the things and am fed up to the back teeth being told what we will and won’t do.
24 year old Lexus GS 300 petrol. Keeps on going. Why get rid of it.
? I do not drive into London or other cities so screw #em all.
Senora O’Blene had problems getting into – and out of, our Golf, so I upped to a Tiguan, petrol of course.
It’s the best car I’ve ever owned, and while I thought I’d keep our old 10yr old Golf forever, I’ve changed my mind for the better!
Bollocks to the increase in costs, I’ll never have to pay for our dotage with our savings…
We have two Diesel engined cars. Both well past their tenth birthdays, but still serviceable. Given the current price of Diesel we’ve cut our use, but I still love the pull of a TDI from the midrange.
An EV evangelist might point out that an EV is just as fast, possibly faster, but I would counter that I don’t have to keep the charge fully topped up if I need to buzz over to Shannon or up to Newport or even over the border oop norf. Several times without having to think about refueling.
So we’ll be hanging on to our two workhorses until sanity becomes fashionable again. Even if we have to buy our Diesel by the 1000 litre tankload or do the chip shop waste oil thing.
I am hoping – maybe in vain – that sanity will prevail. When the whole sorry mess collapses and the motor industry is faced with ruin, it might get its act together and use its collective power to fight back. But so far, their supine compliance doesn’t offer much hope. How many customers saying ‘no thanks’ will it take? How many car salesmen must lose their jobs and showrooms shut down before they finally find some backbone and tell the governments of the world to stick their fines where the sun don’t shine?
I often wonder about the power structures that enable governments to tell people and organisations what to do and about how robust or fragile these structures might be. If people disobey them on mass there must come a point when their decrees from on high become unenforceable. In any case, punishing car manufacturers for the choices of their customers is never going to work, how can it? They are trying to strongarm the car companies to force them to do something that is beyond their control. If electric cars really were superior to ICE cars then government coercion wouldn’t be necessary, they would be racing out of showrooms unaided. I don’t recall smartphones needing government help to become so universal.
This baffles me. These people are actively working against the interests of billions of people and everyone just goes along with it. If the motor industry had collectively told them to fuck off and meant it, what could they have done? If no one buys a milk float, what can they do? Eventually, they might try switching off the petrol supply, but by then, will dissent have reached a critical mass? I do hope so.
I have the same experience with Ford LR. They are going all electric and no longer want my business of a new Fiesta every three years paid for with cash. I don’t want electric cars so next time i change i will go elsewhere, probably to Toyota or Kia. Weird isn’t it how companies trash regular customers.
I was discussing this with a student today. He recommended Toyota as an option should I decide to get a new car, but was also of the opinion that what I have is pretty desirable, so hanging onto it is a good idea.
Definitely worth hanging on to.