We declared Mrs AC’s old VW SORN a few years ago.
It’s on my deceased parents’ drive and is a bit of a mess.
The property is still awaiting probate.
Oddly after many years we’ve had a post-it note through the letterbox from someone happy to pay ‘cash for cars’.
This has twitched me, don’t care what it is or isn’t worth. Is there some kind of scam I should know about or maybe a trade-in incentive for old cars that might be patched up to qualify?
Not an answer as such, but 30 years ago my wife and I both had a particular car, rather rare even then (and wonderful). They were ageing, both around 15 years old with well over 100k miles on their clocks.and as we could justify only one car having by then got married, with mortgage and child, I sold mine while it stlll had a bit of value, and for a couple of years we used hers. Roll on about 3 years and we decided that we’d sell hers before it started to cost a lot to maintain. A few days ago I saw a mint renovated example in a film, and enquiring indicated a value of around £25k for a tatty model needing full renovation, and double that for a pristine restored one!
I wish I still had my early 70s mini, it’s worth more than £300 now. (Bought for £600, sold for £300 late 80s, 89 maybe?)
Is it a beetle? They’re very sought after.
What is it? How old is old? It may be an enthusiast or a scrap dealer.
I’ve knocked on a door to ask if the, clearly unused, car was for sale. Sadly it wasn’t.
It’s nothing fancy just an old VW Polo, I suspectr of very little value, which one Christmas a few years ago we were just too hectic to get MOT’d so parked it up off road at mum’s and did the SORN declaration. It was a good little runner but was constantly needing attention at MOT for one thing or another. The pandemic got in the way of many things including sorting this car out.
Before lock down I used to often see small notices pasted at traffic lights etc which said something like “cash for scrap cars and vans, MOT failures phone [a mobile number]”. I don’t think it’s much money that they pay, but they take something away for a few tenners that would cost real money if you try to get it towed to scrap it yourself.
If it’s nothing special, has a SORN and has just been neglected for a year or so standing outside, then shifting it is going to become a problem you could do without at some point and getting it going again with an MOT will involve quite a bit of work and expense I think.
Anyway I don’t believe the post it note is anything suspicious.
Best
David
No, probably not, I think it’s more that the house is in a cul de sac not a main road which suggests someone has either been wandering around streets maybe looking for such vehicles or perhaps that it’s a neighbour I don’t know.
Just makes me a little concerned about the unoccupied house that I’m struggling to sort out during lockdowns/travel restrictions.
I had planned to get it MOT’d just aa a smaller car maybe for work where parking is difficult, again lockdown has got in the way to some extent and it’s on the back burner.
A Polo not a Beetle.
We got lease vehicles around the time it needed MOT.
Bad planning perhaps but we somehow managed, perhaps out of necessity, to have both previous vehicles needing MOT, insurance etc in late December - generally the most expensive month and most awkward from a practicality viewpoint.
I think in the back of my mind was having it up and running to enable it to be used for one of those incentivised trade-ins for older vehicles at some point.
My understanding is the “cash for clunkers” schemes are based on you owning the trade in vehicle for 12 months or more in order to stop people buying any old rubbish to trade in and get good discount which was not the purpose of the scheme.
I don’t even know if these schemes are still running, I thought they were primarily rolled out by the manufacturers, but do seem to recall certain vehicles having quite substantial discounts offered. I guess in the back of my mind I’m wondering if some ‘enterprising’ individuals might push old bangers through an MOT for peanuts, hold onto the vehicles for an allotted period to qualify and then use them to get discounts on newer cars.
Here is results from quick google search from Oct last year-
Scrappage scheme: latest manufacturer deals and offers | What Car?.
Quite a hefty incentive on some of those!
Yes, but in reality I think only what you can get with a bit of haggling anyway. I bought a little Abarth 3 years ago and with options RRP was just over 24k GBP but I ended up paying just over 19k after some shopping around.
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