It's time for a scrap

Wednesday 25 March 2009

When was the last time you visited a scrapyard? Unless you wear a string vest and have ‘LOVE’ and ‘HATE’ tattooed across your knuckles, the answer is probably not very recently. Until last week I was in the same boat – but now I’m able to tell you that the modern scrapyard is almost nothing like the grim junkyard of old.

Now scrap is in the news at the moment because there’s an (increasing) chance that the Government is going to try and kick-start the motor industry by paying punters to trade their old cars in for shiny new metal, with the aged clunkers in question then heading off for an urgent appointment with the crusher.

Speaking personally, I think that this is a daft idea, and one that’s going to prevent the motor industry from facing up to the chronic over-supply that’s its main problem. But because I work for one of the biggest dealer groups in the country, I’ve also been required to pay a professional visit to a state-of-the-art ‘end of life vehicle recycling centre’ (as scrapyards are now known) to see if it’s up to coping with the potential influx of middle-aged motors.

It was a seriously impressive place, and a far cry from the scrapyards I remember from my youth. When I first started dealing with the places cars tended to be stored in teetering piles, and punters looking for parts were expected to go and unscrew the relevant component themselves, risking death by a massive overdose of Ford Cortina as they did so.

These days it’s more like an operating theatre. In the 21st century scrapyard cars are stored on vast racks, and get silently motored up and down by vast forklift trucks. Members of the public aren’t allowed closer than the front office (or the component recovery company’s website) where they can order the part they want to be removed.

And while the old generation of scrapyard proprietors thought nothing of draining engine oil, brake fluid and coolant directly into the ground, modern scrap cars now have every millilitre of fluid sucked from them for careful recycling – up to and including the fluid in the shock absorbers. I wouldn’t quite eat my dinner off the floor, but I’d let my dog slobber up his Winalot Prime from the concrete without a second thought.

Of course, some things have been lost in the transition from old-school to new-age scrapyards. The very DIY nature of ‘proper’ scrapyards meant that it was always possible to help yourself to a fair amount more than you actually paid for. I remember waddling out of a scrapyard at some point in the early 1970s clutching a Mini rear view mirror that I’d bought for the princely sum of 15p, but with the same Mini’s entire wiper mechanism – which I’d omitted to mention at the point of settling-up – stashed down the front of my trousers.

I got away with it that time – but old scrapyard proprietors were always such terrifying characters as to make you think twice about crossing them. And, of course, no self-respecting scrapyard was complete without a vicious, oil-stained dog on the end of a long chain, which would take an ever dimmer view of thievery than its equally grubby master. I heard one story about a bloke who used an old mattress to circumvent a scrapyard’s barbed wire fence at night a few years ago, nicked himself some stereos and a couple of ‘black boxes’ (early fuel-injected cars’ engine computers – typically worth more than £100) and then made good his escape. Soon the swag was sold and greed got the better of this guy. He convinced himself that nobody had even noticed his thievery and tried the same trick at the same scrapyard a few nights later.

On this occasion, crime didn’t pay – he was half way up a stack of Sierras trying to remove a CD multichanger when he heard what must have been a blood-curdling wail. Seconds later the scrapyard’s canine security officer arrived at the base of the pile, keeping him effectively ‘treed’ until the scrappie and his brother arrived to open up, and to administer the miscreant a well-deserved slapping.

These days scrapyards are far more professional and the Rottweilers have been replaced with CCTV. But as the years have passed, we’ve also started to use scrapyards far less for finding cut-price components for our cars. I was surprised to discover at the modern ‘ELV centre’ that cars tend to go to the crusher with lots of what you’d think would be easily-saleable parts still on them. Apparently it costs more to remove and store things than they are worth in profit now there are fewer-and-fewer people out there trying to repair motors themselves. On my visit I spotted a two-year old Honda Civic that had been in a heavy front shunt, but which was going to the bailer wearing its door mirrors, rear lights and two alloy wheels.

As for the big question – whether the nation’s scrapyards really are ready to receive 250,000-plus cars from a scrap incentive scheme – the answer seems to be a resounding “yes”. The centre I visited can process up to 250 cars a day and is currently doing about a third of that – as the scrappage scheme will take place over several months (and people won’t give up their old car until the new one is ready) there won’t be any trouble at all in destroying all of them. Indeed, the centre’s manager was clearly looking forward the cull with something akin to bloodlust showing in his eyes.

As for whether or not getting rid of half a million old-but-serviceable cars just so that France and Germany’s car factories have got something to build is a good idea – I’ll leave that one up to you.