Head in the Sand approach - that'll help . . .

Which is why I go to the doctors for medical detail on the anatomy and to strip clubs for bronzed beauties.

Retro Rides is to car politics, what strip clubs are to womens lib. We like our thrills fun, fast and loose, the politics behind it all we leave to those places better suited for their discussion where something might actually get done. Some members might part take in those politics, but I'd like to keep that out of the strip club and in the... well the anaolgy breaks down there... but you get my drift.



The problem bazzateer is as you say IMHO,.. people won't listen to your humble opinion, they want empirical data. I'm sure AlistairK has a whole bunch of info on this stuff.

There's a good article and comments here

Googling "car lifetime energy" seems to return estimates that manufacturing accounts for anything from 10% to 50% of a car's lifetime energy use

Broadly, most sources agree that if you're doing a low milage, it's better to keep your car for longer, for a high milage, get a newer more fuel efficient one...

Now, a slight hijack...

I live in the middle of London, and cycle to work through some nice areas, and also driving around, I've seen very few 09 plate cars, or even company vans etc, and we're most of the way through March. Anyone else noticed the same? As I recall, by this long after a new reg, you can usually see a fair few brand new, ie 09 cars, but it doesn't seem like that to me this time?

I've got nothing against helping the car trade really. I don't want people to loose their jobs especially in the factories.
I started a post on this last week and I've been thinking about it a bit.

As far as I see it they should only offer the money if

1: The car is running over a specified emissions level at mot test time or has a manufacturer c02 rating of +240 g/km
2: The car you replace it with has to do more than 40mpg in a combined cycle and have emmisions of less than 180 g/km.

This will simply take older proven dirty cars off the roads and replace them with more economical and cleaner cars.
This way you at least have some kind of positive effect rather than just disposing of old but still clean usable cars in exchange for a possibly dirtier new car for the car dealers benefit.

I heard the guy saying why to do it, it was like something off the Simpsons!!! bizarre

"and thirdly cos buying new cars makes people happy, it is a joyous experience"

Too right it is, hence why i have erm, six old but new to me cars!! cheap thrills ya might call it!

you must really hate your wife to want to swop her for one of them things.