Scrappage stupidity.

Armengar

This is a tale to show you how stupid the scrappage scheme is. My 1999 T reg focus is going to be replaced. I cannot fit 3 child seats (following a 'twin' new arrival) and a double buggy in the car with the shopping (not without stuffing the footwells anyway). So we have decided on a ford SMax as we have always bought fords - for our sins - and the CMax was not quite large enough and for the price a modeo estate is about the same.

The focus is a good runner, a few dents and scratches - well used but reliable. It is only a 1.6 with 159g/km.

Now then. Ford have declared a scrappage of £2000 and a further discount of £2500 off the list price of an SMax basic petrol model (without any haggling yet) so it will be £14690. A quick check on brokers such as drivethedeal etc has given me a price of about £800 less. So I plan on going to the dealer and haggling freebee optional extras (that I actually want and roughly coming to the £800 difference) for the 14690 prefering to at least give the local guy a fair crack of the whip before going to an internet broker.

The kicker? The petrol model is 194 g/km and using my excel skills I have calculated my running costs over 4 years including tax, fuel, estimated running costs etc and worked out that the petrol is cheaper than the diesel for me to run. So I will be scrapping a car for a more polluting model. Does this brand me a bad person?