Jaguar World Magazine X300 owner’s guide December 2008 Back Issue

At the same time as the majority of
the UK’s population was getting very
upset indeed about two Radio 2
presenters wasting licence payer’s
money, the European Commission announced
its support for an EU wide scheme that could
have results even less funny for the motoring
enthusiasts amongst us than lewd phone calls
to an answer machine…
The proposed scheme would see motorists
receive incentives to scrap ‘older’ cars and buy
newer more fuel efficient models, plus a £32-billion
package of low interest loans to help the motor
industry develop new greener technologies.
Now, whatever your views on the environmental
challenges faced by the world, I think anyone would
be hard pushed to argue that the development
of ‘cleaner’ new cars, and cleaner ways of
manufacturing those cars, can be a bad thing in the
long term, so the proposal for the low interest loans
is understandable, if not that easy to stomach in the
current financial climate… However, I’ve a problem
with the ‘scrapping’ side of such a scheme from
two key perspectives.
For starters, the architects of any such scheme
would need to think very carefully about how they
proposed to treat manufacturers of large, luxury,
prestige cars such as Jaguar that, along with Land
Rover, employs around 16,000 people. Jaguar
Land Rover is already investing significant sums in
developing ‘green’ technology, but the simple fact
is that a luxury car such as an XJ is never going to
be as environmentally friendly as something like a
Citroën C1. To introduce a scheme that effectively
incentivises customers to buy small cars will
obviously put manufacturers that don’t produce
such cars at a disadvantage, and that seems rather
unfair – not to mention the potential of putting jobs
at risk. Unsurprisingly, though, some manufacturers
of smaller cars are supportive of the proposals.
Secondly, from a pure motoring enthusiast’s
point of view, any scheme that encourages the
scrapping of old cars seems to be overkill.