Age of vehicles.
 

I am amazed while reading the forum and looking at your garages, just how many "old" cars and trucks there are listed on here.
In the UK the vehicle registration plates have "age identifier" numbering (even to what half of the year it was first registered). Finding vehicles prior to 2001 are like hunting for hens teeth, with most vehicles less than 10 years old. About the only vehicles fitted with pre-2001 plates are, like mine, "vanity plates" (you can fit older plates to a newer car but not newer plates to an old car).
On the site here I see tons of 90's vehicles, some even older. Perhaps that is because the owners of new cars can afford not to be too concerned about their fuel costs!
In the UK there has been a huge increase in personal lease hire recently, so people are leasing brand new vehicles then after 4 years they are sold on the secondhand market. This depresses the prices of older cars and they become less attractive to keep running. The less enlightened think, why spend £200 to fix it when for another £200 I can replace it with something a good bit newer. So the old cars go to the scrap metal brokers.

Didn't the UK have some sort of buy back on older cars a few years back?
I remember seeing something about it on Topgear at some time.

The newest car I've ever owned is my 2003 Diahatsu Copen.

There was a scheme that paid £1000 against a BRAND NEW car from certain participating dealers. The old car was then scrapped. However the scheme failed miserably, as very few people who were running the old cars were in a position to buy a brand new one, myself included. There was also the fact that the dealers and manufactures upped the prices of the relevant vehicles, making the actual incentive considerably less than the £1000.
I think the reason we have fewer old cars on our roads is down to our stringent MOT annual testing combined with our winter weather and the use of salt on the roads. Because we get frosty nights and rainy days they have to grit every evening before a forecast frosty night. The UK spreads 2,000,000 tonnes of salt on our roads, every winter.

Salt on roads kills cars but so does ice. I live on the West coast of the US, they do not salt the roads here. I have a 1968 Chevrolet pickup that has been in the family since new. It could use a new coat of paint and some minor brake work but is road ready.

Are the older cars getting scrapped, or sold in another market?

Many people in the US have garages, tools, and the mindset to work on their own cars. Half of the country has no requirement for emission inspection. Oregon for example only requires emission inspection in 2 cities, with the vast majority of the state having no inspection requirement. If a catalytic converter gets clogged up and fails, I just pound a hole through it and ignore the check engine light.

People on this forum are more likely to have tools and be willing to work on older vehicles since they are already contemplating modifications to make their vehicles more fuel efficient. It's also likely that some on this forum are more frugal, and owning an older vehicle is a smart financial decision.

I find it interesting the vast differences in vehicles around the US. In Oregon cities, I see mostly Toyota, Honda, Subaru, VW, Hyundai, Chevy, Ford, etc. I'll see a Lamborghini or Ferrari once per year. In Miami Florida, I see a Lamborghini or Ferrari every 2 minutes, with the common vehicle being a luxury brand such as Lexus, Acura, Audi, Mercedes, Lincoln, and Cadillac. In central to southern California, aftermarket wheels are extremely popular, even on hoopties. It's not uncommon to see a vehicle with wheels that are worth more than the rest of the car. In Oregon, it's usually only teenagers in old Hondas that get aftermarket wheels.

The bulk of vehicles on the road here are newer...ie less than 15 years old. Heck, at least half of them are 10 years or less.

There's fewer and fewer people who can work on their own vehicles, and fewer yet who will keep putting money in to an older car. Most get retired soon after two hundred thousand kilometers are on the odo, because there's little resale value; as soon as something major goes after that, it's bye-bye...

You have the odd person, like myself, who will snatch them up for cheap when that happens, and breathe new life in to them. Only because I can do my own work. If i had to pay someone else to? forget it.

The cost of living is also high here in this city...for most, if you can afford to live here, you can afford to drive something newer. Get out of the city proper and the age/quality of cars drops off. People don't care as much if their car is rusty and burning blue when there isn't much of an audience.

The cars just get scrapped. They are not worth selling on.
When I was working in California I was wowed by all the old cars I saw. Some old pick ups with the paintwork matted by years of sun and dust.

Competition from the usually cheaper and well-mantained JDM used cars are likely to make used car exports from the UK less attractive.


Keeping an older vehicle on the road, eventually retrofitted with a more modern engine which also happens to be compliant to stricter emission standards, actually makes more sense not just due to the economical aspect but also due to environmental concerns. Or even if they retain their older engines with some overhaul, it's worth to notice that some are actually easier to convert to alternate fuels which address quite effectively the emissions issue and are not a maintenance nightmare at all. Well, it does surprise me that the bureaucrats from the European Union don't seem to consider this and just set a witch-hunting against older beaters.

Not ice, really. I live on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada, and ski, so I do a lot of driving in snow & ice. Roads do get salted a bit, though being semi-desert, not so much as in wetter places. I expect that after the ice melts and the road dries, the salt mostly blows away, rather than remaining as a corrosive liquid.

Anyway, there aren't that many rusty vehicles around - my '88 Toyota pickup is showing a little bit around the bed, but nowhere near becoming rusted-out holes. And of course my Insight is aluminum.

At least around here, one reason people keep older vehicles (besides not wanting the crap that comes on new ones) is that they tend to be a lot more rugged than fancier new ones. And if you use your truck for actual work - hauling firewood or hay, for instance - or drive on back roads, you don't have to stress out over the fear of scratching your shiny new toy's paint.

We had almost the same stupid scam here back around 2008.
It was supposed to be an economic stimulus package. Only problem was it turned into economic stimulus for japan.

My friends southern texas registered 2001 Honda civic doesn't have more than a spot of rust on it.
By comparison anything in made made around 2000 in Maine is probably a rusted out crap box.