"Zimmy" wrote in message
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"Dave Baker" wrote in message
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"Doki" wrote in message
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wrote:
Going rate for an 8 year old Focus looks like £1-2k. I
recently picked up a 5 year old 406 HDI estate for £2.5k. If
you avoid the German makes, the depreciation is pretty
vicious and the cars end up damned cheap for what they are.

The speed of depreciation on cars always surprises me. My
Focus 2.0 ESP is 7 years old in June, hasn't gone wrong in the
4 years I've had it, does everything just as well as a new car
but is worth only a tiny fraction of the price. High
depreciation makes more sense with cars that rust badly but
the Focus doesn't do that. If the government really wanted to
do something about the environment they'd make it more
financially attractive to keep running older cars rather than
squandering resources building new ones.

How about no road tax on cars over 10 years old?

That would put the cat amongst the pigeons as far as the car
manufacturers were concerned.
I think any measures taken to promote the idea of making products
that last longer, and that encourage consumers to have things
repaired
rather than simply replaced if they do go wrong, is far greener
than
advising we use things like fluorescent bulbs, or switch off low
volt adaptors, phone chargers etc, when not actually in use.
Mike.