Total left? An interesting reflection....

[Robson Rover Repair]

So waiting on my night shift to end i've grabbed my calculator and visited how many left and added up the following. Obviously this is a pinch of salt, but it will maybe make owners consider not to break a car unnecessarily again.

These are obviously based on cars road taxed within England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and does not include export figures.

I choose 2006 with it being the end of MG Rover and essentially our car production and figured it would be a solid base to judge off as from this point on the cars became "unwanted" to many.

All the 75's on the road 2006 - 103760

All the 75's on the road 2016 - 37021


All the MG ZT/ZTTs on the road in 2006 - 21491

All the MG ZT/ZTTs on the road in 2016 - 8292


And as the rough base remember.......

1999 53581 Cowley
2000 28388 Cowley + 3156 Longbridge
2001 33883 + 3510 MGZT Longbridge
2002 32123 + 6914 MGZT Longbridge
2003 30449 + 8011 MGZT Longbridge
2004 24156 + 6844 MGZT Longbridge
2005 5439 + 1870 MGZT Longbridge

I dread to imagine how it will read in 2026.....

[SCP440]

Unless somebody can come up with a way of getting the electronics repaired economically I suspect it will be down to a thousand or so in another 10 years. This seems to be the biggest killer of modern old cars these days. A warning light on now on some systems is an MOT fail and with the potential cost being thousands why would you bother if you can buy another car for less.

Only a few weeks ago I tried to get a Focus through its MOT, it needed an ABS controller repair and together with some other faults would have cost £600. The owner collected it and got £50 from a local breaker. It drove perfectly and had only done 75k with a full service history.

20 years ago we scrapped cars because of rust these days we scrap them because of electrical faults, probably a 10p resistor or diode but what ever it is it keeps car manufacturers busy. There is a lot to be said for poverty spec cars.

[zedhed]

well no matter what electrical or mechanical component that fails,I will always strip it and try to repair it myself first rather than buy new,if the part is very expensive anyway.

[first-things-first]

Thanks Colin. Very insightful. Mine is only 1 of 14 left! (in the 85 auto diesel tune it left the factory).

Seems we are all now driving quite rare cars - and mine is common as muck (comparatively) XPG.

[BigRuss]

Originally Posted by SCP440

Unless somebody can come up with a way of getting the electronics repaired economically I suspect it will be down to a thousand or so in another 10 years. This seems to be the biggest killer of modern old cars these days. A warning light on now on some systems is an MOT fail and with the potential cost being thousands why would you bother if you can buy another car for less.
20 years ago we scrapped cars because of rust these days we scrap them because of electrical faults, probably a 10p resistor or diode but what ever it is it keeps car manufacturers busy. There is a lot to be said for poverty spec cars.

The experienced T4 members of the forum already do that, and despite electronic modules being coded to our cars, we've found ways of being able to reuse second hand units and code them properly to the car. This has kept cost down and enabled many cars that would have otherwise been scrapped stay on the road.

Also on the forum there's lots of information that explains how to fault trace different problems far more than for any other make or model.

Unfortunately with a lot of the modules containing microprocessors and hundreds of components it's often impractical in terms of time to locate a faulty component.

What is really killing our cars faster than anything else is the quality of some of the replacement parts that are now available. If your paying good money time and again for the same job doing repeatedly then you're soon going to move on to something else. Some suspension components spring to mind but there's lots of others Even once trusted parts suppliers we and our customers are finding that they are now stocking rubbish parts.

Russ

[Ravinder]

Clutches and fuel pumps will defo be killing our cars too, unfortunately.

[Mickyboy]

Originally Posted by BigRuss

The experienced T4 members of the forum already do that, and despite electronic modules being coded to our cars, we've found ways of being able to reuse second hand units and code them properly to the car. This has kept cost down and enabled many cars that would have otherwise been scrapped stay on the road.

Also on the forum there's lots of information that explains how to fault trace different problems far more than for any other make or model.

Unfortunately with a lot of the modules containing microprocessors and hundreds of components it's often impractical in terms of time to locate a faulty component.

What is really killing our cars faster than anything else is the quality of some of the replacement parts that are now available. If your paying good money time and again for the same job doing repeatedly then you're soon going to move on to something else. Some suspension components spring to mind but there's lots of others Even once trusted parts suppliers we and our customers are finding that they are now stocking rubbish parts.

Russ

Russ has nailed it superbly

[Best_of_British]

Bang on the nail, poor quality replacement parts.

Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

[bl52krz]

I agree about rubbish parts, and the suppliers of such parts should really be put on a list,and tracked for their warranty back up procedure. No good warranty, no good to buy from.

[Jim Jamieson]

Government legislation may play a big part as well. Between the ridiculous tax banding and emissions etc they seem to be trying their best to get rid of all cars over a certain age.