Two new Nissan GTRs were some of the first sales to be recorded after the UK introduced its clunker-rebate scheme yesterday. “Buyers pounced within five hours of the initiative starting this morning,” reported Autotrader.co.uk. Britain’s scrappage incentive offers about $3K per scrapped ten-years-or-older vehicle, but unlike other EU nations, Britain did not place carbon emission limits on qualifying new cars. Because, as Autotrader points out, proponents of the bill worked with the assumption that rising efficiency averages means all new cars are less polluting than the vehicles they would replace. Nissan’s GTR emits 298g/km of CO2, earning it a spot in Britain’s most-polluting tax band. We can only hope our own eventual scrappage rebate will be vulnerable to similar abuse.
No word on what the people who bought those Nissans traded in? Maybe it was still dirtier than what they bought. Perhaps and ancient Jensen?
Oops I mean scraped not traded in.
Two things to remember:
* CO2 is not the only pollutant, and the GT-R is still “cleaner” than many older cars of similar power and ability
* $3K is not much on the MSRP of a European-market GT-R
As such, this isn’t so much a misuse as an aberration. A “misuse” would be selling vehicles over 6000lbs to avoid fuel economy regulations, marketing trucks as the replacement for family cars for the same reason, or allowing lawyers and doctors to write off an Escalade as a “work vehicle” because it’s a truck.
Challenger SRT-8 here I come!
Yep lots of people sitting on 10 year old cars needing an extra 3k help on a GT-R…Right
does $3k even cover the 1st service on a GT-R?
This news is no news. It’s rather an coincidence than anything else.
I guess some political party wanted to make a point here and took these as an example for poorly executed laws … of which the UK has had quite a record recently.
“Yep lots of people sitting on 10 year old cars needing an extra 3k help on a GT-R…Right”
“Britain’s scrappage incentive offers about $3k per scrapped ten year or older vehicle,”
Sounds like you may be able to scrap as many as you want. Scrap 30 and the GT-R is free.
At $82,000 per GT-R copy, two were sold?
Joke!
Watch Wheeler Dealers HD Theater. UK car stuff and very interesting.
RogerB34 – spot on, that Wheeler Dealers show on HD Theatre is one of my favorite shows.
Something tells me Jeremy Clarkson was behind this.