I decided to keep mine.
Car manufacturers are having to ration the sales of petrol and hybrid cars in the UK to avoid falling foul of the government’s rules on zero emission vehicle sales, according to the boss of one of Britain’s biggest dealership chains.
I am no longer in the market for a new car. The one I have works well and I’m keeping it for the foreseeable future. Certainly while we wait out the inevitable collapse of the insane Net Zero bollocks.
The manufactures and dealers have a choice here – they can go along with it and die, or they can fight back. It is up to them. Many, like me, have refused to play the game and they are now feeling the pinch. If all the manufactures worked together and refused to play, there is little government could do to enforce their rules. We are many, they are few. It is time they found that out the hard way. But maybe the manufacturers need to really feel the pain before they revolt. I’ve done my bit. It’s up to them now.
In remarks reported by the Telegraph, Mr Forrester said: ‘It’s almost as if we can’t supply the cars that people want, but we’ve got plenty of the cars that maybe they don’t want.
Well, duh!
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: ‘We do not recognise these claims, with industry data showing that the UK car market is as strong as ever.
‘The target for zero emission cars in 2024 is 22 per cent, which gives manufacturers flexibility to sell a range of products, as they have done in previous years.’
Classic doublespeak. The existence of the targets contradicts the claim. They must think we are stupid. Either way, I am not, now or in the future, buying an EV or hybrid. ICE or nothing.
Cue the cheap chinese EV imported purely to be registered by a dealer then parked up in a remote field somewhere. Registrations count as sales, they are frequently used in the business to achieve targets for dealer bonuses, but they are not sales as we would understand it.
I am a long time Prius driver; I’m on my third. Every one of them has had an ICE. That’s what Hybrid means; ICE + some form of Electric.
Hardly unexpected.
I’m considering a replacement, and have begun to investigate, but my I20 has a couple of years left in it at least.
I was thinking of brand new (my first!) to see me out, but a reasonable second hand (203 years old) would do. If I have to pay a bit over the odds to get what suits me, so be it.
What I WON’T EVER consider is a milk float, and I’m not terribly enamoured of hybrids either (I’ve driven them as hire cars and they are perfectly usable, but ownership – battery on board etc – includes an element of risk I’m not prepared to carry).
Delaying delivery makes perfect sense from the dealer point of view, and if this is the way of getting a new real car – I have to wait 6 months or so – while I wouldn’t like it, I would grudgingly put up with it.
The milk float is as dead as the dodo. They must be piling up in ports at the rate of thousands a month. Who actually buys these things, or even considers them?
And if you ARE stupid enough to do so, how long will it have been standing idle in a compound?
This nut zero mandate is SO typical of the “let them eat cake” mindset of the globo-filth whores and is a measure of their insulation from the real world of real people and real businesses.
Peasant, you will do what you’re told!
I’d be suspicious of an 1821 release i20, that’s pre-facelift and the satnav is terrible.
Oh, my delicate pianist hands!
2-3 of course.
But a 203 year old I20 would still be preferable to a milk float!
Be worth a lot more, too.
Needing expensive work to get through an MOT is usually the prompt for changing my car for a newer one, newer, never a new one. My current car has just passed the 100,000 mile mark but runs well and has a full service history. If ICE cars are in short supply and the price goes up then the maths change when it comes to the decision to hang on to it.
“ICE or nothing.”
Your terms are acceptable to them. Nothing it is, then.
This “rationing” is all part of the plan. A restriction in the supply of ICE cars will push up prices, bringing them closer to that of EVs but, crucially, making all cars more expensive. That’s the real goal: pricing you out of the market. When we watched footage of the streets of Peking around 1980, we wondered what kind of hellish tyranny could reduce the population of a great city to swarming around on bicycles. Our governments saw a utopia.
My terms may be acceptable, but I can bide my time as I have a very nice ICE car. Their plans are built on sand, so I just have to wait for it all to implode.
I think it’s already begun. Couple of years?
The key to longevity is regular servicing and keeping the bodywork free from tinworm: if the shell is uncorrupted, the mechanicals can be replaced ad infinitum. Cost usually rears its ugly head at some stage, hence the traditional Yorkshire motorist’s war cry of “‘OW MUCH?”, but many revivable vehicles are binned because the owner won’t spend more on a repair than the car’s perceived value.
Short of it getting damaged beyond repair, there’s every chance our 19 year old Landcruiser will still be going strong when they plant herself and me.
As said, regular complete servicing all done by me as are annual rustproofing methods.
Diesel banned from cities you say? thank goodness for that can’t stand the bloody places.
We’re not having a battery car, ever.
Apparently every petrol, diesel or hibred car sold above the quota and the dealer is fined £15000. So selling a car isn’t worth it, better to wait a while. As it’s fines, could be hard to fight against. I have a very old Clio, just got to keep it going.
If they can’t sell EVs, they go bust, so eventually, they have to tell the government to do one and mean it. If they all do it, then there is a standoff.
A few weeks ago I went into a main dealer’s intent on ordering a new car but was told there would be a six-month or more wait for my spec – pure petrol, of course – but was led towards an immediately available milk-float.
Once I made it abundantly clear that such a vehicle will never darken my drive, it suddenly became apparent that a pre-registered one of my precise spec was available there with only 180 miles on the clock and £2k off list price. Guess what I bought?
Given that the story has now broken cover in the media, I guess it’s worth a lot more already. Some you win . . . .
I bought a brand new Fiesta in 2022. Usually i change every 3 years. Now in my seventies i can no longer afford this. I have decided to keep my car until at least 2027 and see what is happening then,
My Father In Law used to change his car every three years but, as he got older, decided that he didn’t want to learn his way around a new car and decided to hang on to his Renault Scenic, now twenty two years old with about a quarter of a million miles on it.
Overall, which is better for the environment, especially in terms of nasty, evil, CO2 into the atmosphere:
Buy an up-to-date, all singing, all dancing, approved by the EUSSR and Whitehall, new car every 2 or 3 years, or:
Buy something that ticks all the boxes and keep it, maintained and roadworthy, for ten years or more?
Really, I don’t know and I don’t care – I have my 12 year old Defender and I am content.
Also, I use it for towing – is there a half sensible hybrid or battery motor that would fill the reqirement?
All of which is predicated on the belief (faith?) that the outputs of motor vehicles have any effect whatsoever on the planet’s climate.
My challenge to them is to explain the Ice Ages – in those times, the climate of the planet changed enough to create, then melt, ice up to a mile thick. There was not a single motor vehicle, power station or other alleged polluter in existence and yet the climate managed to change so dramatically. The scale of forces involved in natural climate change is way beyond anything that mankind can input to the equation.
Swapping any efficient petrol vehicle for a milk-float is pissing in the wind.
The latest excuse for the climate models not reflecting reality is that it’s the rate of change that is important.
When the climate has cooled and warmed over millennia, it was gradual so the Earth could adapt. Man made change is rapid and so the equilibrium can’t be brought back into balance.
If you believe that, I have an overpriced crappy EV to sell you!
I am in the market for a new car, and this nonsense is the reason why the price of used cars has gone through the roof. I can now buy the exact same vehichle I drove seven years ago, and expect to pay a grand more than I did back then. At least
The main effect of this is to prevent youngsters getting their first car.
I paid (adjusting for inflation) about a grand for my introduction to the joys of the open road (shudders inwardly) a 1976 hillman avenger.
Ye gods that car was crap!
But it was mine and I could go wherever my tolerance for the appalling wind noise allowed.
When zI do finally get round to it, new with a wait might be better than overpriced second hand.
Unless waiting times become soviet of course.
Shortly after I had passed my driving test my parents acquired a Hillman Hunter, it was a lovely car. It was sort of like a slightly more upmarket Mk4 Cortina.
I think the goal is that you don’t have the capacity for independent travel and we have seen from their response to the riots that they will find the prison capacity for you if you resist. Who knows if they will back down, so far they seem determined to press ahead. And while there are fewer of them be assured they have a lot of free time!!
The leaders of the old Soviet empire thought that, too. Push people far enough and the dam will burst. It’s just a matter of how far and how much time. The thought of Starmer and his acolytes experiencing a Ceausescu moment warms the cockles.