Vauxhall has launched a new green initiative to encourage eco friendly motoring that will offer owners the chance to scrap their bangers and replace them with the most fuel -efficient and lowest-polluting new models .
From now until the end of August, Vauxhall will offer a £1,000 bonus for anyone trading in a car that is then scrapped in exchange for the lowest emission versions of the Corsa, Meriva, Astra and Zafira models .
Even for drivers who do not want their cars scrapped, dealers will still offer a £250 trade-in bonus to encourage buyers to purchase one of Vauxhall’s cleaner models .
Vauxhall says it believes the campaign, called ecoFLEX, could have a dramatic effect on reducing emissions in the UK, and is the first part of a new European environmental initiative by parent company General Motors .
"Modern, low-emission vehicles can only help the environment when they also replace the old cars which still blight Britain’s roads," said Jonathan Browning, Vauxhall’s chairman and the vice-president of GM Europe .
According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders there are over 15 million cars currently on UK roads that are seven-years-old or more, while almost nine million of these are more than nine-years-old and four million aged at over 12-years.
A 1995 Vauxhall Astra 1.7 D has an economy average of 44mpg, compared to the current 1.3 CDTi model that achieves 59mpg.
Every spare litre of petrol saves 2.4kg of CO2 and every litre of diesel saves 2.6kg, so a driver covering 12,000 miles a year in the new Astra would save around £300 in fuel and 800kg of CO2 .
The real results would start to show if 1,000 petrol vehicles built in the early 1990s are taken off the roads, as this would prevent 11.5 tons of nitrogen oxide and 41.5 tons of carbon monoxide from being pumped into the atmosphere each year based on an annual mileage of 12,000.
