The Triumph Mayflower was only produced from 1949 to 1953 so there are not many examples around these days, especially ones in good condition.
One example was traded in for a new MINI under the Scrappage Scheme and as disposal of scrappage cars is dealt with centrally by BMW UK, the Dealer had no control over its fate and it was eventually destroyed.
Follow the link below for a picture and a copy of the response letter from BMW.
www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/2009/10/11/scrappage-kill.../
Mandy should have set a 25-year age limit for the scrappage scheme like the Americans did for their scheme!
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It's an ugly little car, the Mayflower!
Probably better being turned into spares.
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>It's an ugly little car, the Mayflower!<
So's the BMW Mini - I guess it was an appropriate swap. No taste in the 1950s, still no taste in the Noughties...
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A 1954 Mayflower was my first car. I bought it for £10 in 1966, having saved up my pocket money. I sold it for £20 2 years later, and moved up to a Triumph Roadster costing £45.
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Dealer would have every control over the car's fate. They could have still given discount "a la scrappage scheme" but punted the car in another direction methinks.
On the open market how much is a car like this worth? + or - £1000 I don't know.
Having gone to the blog via the link above people's views are a bit OTT after all it is only a car, an old one and perhaps not very desirable one at that. Perhaps the owner did their damndest to sell the car with no luck, who knows the real story.
No body has died, suffered or gotten injured in this tale so who cares?
It's like tut tutting at those involved in rallying/racing classic cars. What if they crash and "hurt" these old cars. They are a commodity NOT a living being.
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Absolutely criminal IMO en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Triumph_Mayflower.JPG
unrelated comment snipped, smokie
Edited by smokie on 24/10/2009 at 10:05
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Nobody here seems to have read the thread of posts with the article - otherwise comment would have been made. If a poster is to be believed, the registration number has been transferred off this vehicle before scrapping. How is this possible unless the original registered owner did it? Is someone in the dealers making a few quid on the side? That should warrant further BMW correspondence!
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I don't see any connection between an old car and Griffin.
We should look after our heritage. Forty years ago we were only too happy to tear down old victorian buildings and erect nice new modern ones made of reinforced concrete. Not many would see the benefit now of that move, but some of the better concrete structures need to be saved as they are part of our building heritage and in years to come, may well be cherished for what they are, in the same way we now look at victorian architecture.
The Triumph Mayflower shoud be treated the same. As for politicians, very few leave anything worthwhile to be remembered by once they've gone.
Edited by Chris M on 24/10/2009 at 10:11
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>>> some of the better concrete structures need to be saved as they are part of our building heritage<<>
Funny you should mention that - in my town there is a 60's concrete building used by the Police and there was a ooo ah about plans to knock it down as some considered it an eye sore.
Although I knew of sed building, I couldn't really place it in my 'minds eye', so - I went to look at it with my 'critical eye' and ... yes! I would say (quoting you) it is part of our heritage and needs to be saved but - alas isn't going to be.
Motoring connection - I like to see old classic and vintage cars on the road, my neighb restores them & has some really excellent examples - pure joy!
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All the fuss on the comments page reminds me of the stuff that used to go on (and probably still does) in railway preservation circles. Everyone huffing and puffing about what a disgrace it was that a certain piece of time-expired metal (of which forty already preserved) wasn't going to be "saved" and no-one actually putting up the wedge to do it.
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I have used the scrappage scheme but am not familiar with the munitiae of the system!
I think that somewhere in the paperwork is a "Certificate of Destruction", so I am not sure how a car handed in for scrappage could be diverted back into the market and onto the road.
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if you "handed in your car for scrappage" and got the deal you expected would you bother what happened to your scrapper? I know I didn't as long as the deal was right I was happy.
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All the fuss on the comments page reminds me of the stuff that used to go on (and probably still does) in railway preservation circles. Everyone huffing and puffing about what a disgrace it was that a certain piece of time-expired metal (of which forty already preserved) wasn't going to be "saved" and no-one actually putting up the wedge to do it.
Old railway locomotives are usually put up for sale and sold to the highest bidder via sealed bid or at auction so potential buyers (e.g. preservation groups or scrap dealers) have every opportunity to buy it.
Under the car scrappage scheme no-one is given the chance to buy the car. Once the paperwork has been submitted, it HAS to be destroyed.
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It's an ugly little car the Mayflower! Probably better being turned into spares.
Chances are that it was crushed "as is" so there would have been no opportunity to take any spares off it.
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Shouldn't someone start one of these government petitions against the scrapping scheme?
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Well, if anyone cares that much about our "motoring heritage" why don't they offer to pay the owners of old cars £2000 for them as an alternative to having them scrapped.
If somebody decides to scrap their old banger (which is all it is to the scrapping owner) to get a new car it's there own business.
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as ive said before why not burn all the books in the british library too
after all they are old and im sure we have them recorded on tape somewhere
maybe make the building a drop in centre for down and outs or something
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A book is of use to hundreds of people in its lifetime, it doesn't rust or rot or deteriorate, if looked after properly. An old car is of possible use to one owner, at a time, if he can get £2000 for a heap of ferric oxide with wheels on it, what's the problem?
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Bell boy has a point though. To continue the topic drift, a lot of the Victorian housing demolished during the sixties and seventies, when power-crazed yobbish councils were gutting the middles of our towns and cities for the benefit of their contractor friends, consisted of perfectly nice restorable small houses, far nicer to look at and live in than most of the cheapskate flats that replaced them. Of course some were nasty two-up-two-down back-to-back jobs as well.
The Mayflower was rather horrible and in its way the absolute archetype of a pretentious, very British - in the worst possible sense - small car. Made slightly later aberrations like the Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet look positively sophisticated. It rusted too, which is why so few examples are left.
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My first car was a 1959 Ford Popular. In 1973 I scrapped it as it was riddled with rust. Today my brother told me there is a 1961 Popular for sale in the Surrey Advertiser for £1850. There can't be much original steel left on it.
Would I like to see it? Yes
Would I like to drive it? Yes, once, to see how much things have moved on.
Would I pay £1850 for it? No way
Would I take £2000 for it if it was mine? Yes
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Was it Captain Mainwaring who said "oh dear, what a pity, never mind"?
JH
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No but it was Jim Bowen on Bully who said "Smashing Super"
Edited by Altea Ego on 24/10/2009 at 17:53
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I've started a SAVE IT FROM SCRAPPAGE thread, so anyone offering a classic for scrappage or any dealer who knows one is coming in can pre-advertise it here for the £2,000 and possibly find someone prepared to save the car.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
Thread at: tinyurl.com/yhtrw4a
HJ
Edited by Honestjohn on 24/10/2009 at 18:45
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Surely it's only £1000 that the owner should be seeking in a private deal to cover their costs as that's what the government pay into the deal? The manufacturer is discounting their RRP by £1000 to meet their side of the deal so I would presume that in most instances negotiating the £1000 off list would be feasible. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?
Edited by bostin on 24/10/2009 at 18:16
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The point about the British Library is that, as far as I know, it contains one copy of every book ever published in this country. It is a historical archive, not a museum.
If the Mayflower was particularly rare, and was a half-decent car when new, it would merit saving and all the attendant fuss about its demise.
It's not particularly rare, was by all accounts a bit of a dog ( seeing the pic it makes me think that if a Trabant was built in Britain it'd look like that) so I find it a bit hard to get excited over its fate.
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That's a very good idea HJ. Deserves to be publicised a bit in fact, spread beyond the back room, because such cars aren't all that common really but do exist (the Morris Minor in a recent thread for example).
Should be interesting.
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"Was it Captain Mainwaring who said "oh dear, what a pity, never mind"?"
No, I think it was 'oh dear, what a shame, never mind' and it was it was Sergeant Major Shut Up.
Lovely boy. Lovely boy.
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im pleased you see as i do lud
my nearest town is a 60"s fiasco of concrete and councilors who had and still dont have any idea
its the same with cars
its makes me sick to think our heritage is going in a big pot
anyone who thinks that we arent losing our heritage needs to think again,it might only be a car but its the car that got your parents where you are today
well done hj but you are a bit late to jump on the bandwagon of saviour that has now lost its wheels
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I think this is terrible and what I also think is terrible is the scrapping of perfectly good cars under the scheme (which many tout as a "green" incentive). A dealer on another forum told of taking a very good condition Merc C240 with only £70K and FSH. What a criminal waste.
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Clearly this debate is going to split down the middle, with those who are not interested in classic cars thinking the scrapping of the Mayflower is good riddance and those who are into classic cars regarding it as a great shame.
One possible solution would be to ammend the scrappage scheme rules so that any car eligible for free road tax is automatically not eligible for the scrappage scheme. Free road tax is a considerable perk for classic car owners so this could be seen as a fair trade off.
My understanding of the purpose of the scrappage scheme is to get old, polluting cars off the road, while at the same time providing support for the general motor industry. Thus it has both a green and economic agenda behind it.
Clearly there are a number of classic cars being scrapped, but the numbers must be very small compared to mainstream old cars. Thus the economic benefit of scrapping classics is likely to be small. Classic cars also generally do very low annual mileages. Thus the green benefit is also likely to be miniscule.
Personally I think it is a shame to be scrapping classic cars.
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Just because a car (or any vehicle) is old does not automatically make it a classic.
The Mayflower is generally accepted as a bit of a turkey and perhaps the fact that it was only in production for four years goes some way towards confirming this.
I see the same thing happening on the British bike scene; a casual trawl through e-bay and the like brings up some real old rubbish which really doesn't merit saving.
For the record, I thoroughly enjoy classic vehicles; I own a pick-up and two motorbikes which enjoy free tax, though that is just a bonus really taken against the pleasure of owning, showing and using them. I do not, however, see the point in preserving numerous examples of vehicles which were generally considered to be not that good when they were new.
For Derfel's idea to work, though, the tax exemption would have to be returned to the "over 25 years" qualification, which would probably be prohibitively expensive as well as being counter-productive towards the original scrappage scheme.
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I do agree that not every old car (or bike) is necessarily a classic and the Triumph Mayflower is not exactly Pininfarina! However, there was a recent short article in my local paper about the car Scrappage Scheme as implemented, in this instance, by Suzuki as below:
"Of the orders taken, Suzuki has seen some unusual and classic vehicles that have come through the door to be traded in. These include a Fiat Coupe, Triumph TR7 and Spitfire, BMW 2002, Jaguar XJ Sport, Mercedes-Benz 380 SLC and several MGBs."
There are some genuine classics in this list and it just seems a shame for them to be scrapped. If road tax exempt vehicles were no longer eligible for the scrappage scheme, at least cars like these would be more likely to be sold on to enthusiasts. Even if they are old rust buckets, at least the parts could be sold on and re-used to keep other BMW 2002s etc on the road.
It does seem odd for government on the one hand to provide support for historic vehicles through tax exemption and then to also provide incentive to scrap them!
As Harleyman says, guess they could revert back to the 25 year rule, but even if this were implemented for the present pre 73 rule, it would save some good cars. Not sure what the figures are, but the numbers must be quite low for cars this old going for scrappage, so it is hard to see how this would impact much on the dual aims of the scheme, the green aspect and the industry stimulation aspect.
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Nope JH - it was the Sergeant Major ( Played by Windsor Davies )in his Welsh baritone in 'It aint half hot Mum' usually to Lofty ( played by the late Don Estelle) or the La did da Gunner Graham ... and it it was his usual response to anything to which the soldiers objected .
It is also my reaction when I see someone get their rightful comeuppance...like the cyclist who rode brazenly through a red light beside me only to be stopped by an alert PC and given a sound ticking off and then sent to the back of the queue at the lights....or a justice minister caught by their own employment legislation.....
The actual wording as I recall was 'Oh dear , how sad , never mind'......
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Indeed it was helicopter, well remembered.
Memory going. Tick. :-(
JH
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