Secretary’s Scribbles

Are you exchanging your car when it is older than its predecessors?  If so, you are part of a national trend.  “Roads full of bangers as drivers hang on to old cars” was a headline in The Daily Telegraph one day last month.  It was prompted by research by the RAC Foundation which found that the age of the average British car has risen to a record of almost 10 years old.  Nearly 34 million cars were licensed at the end of last year; 40.7 per cent of these were at least a decade old compared to 32.7 per cent at the end of 2015.  The average age of cars licensed in the UK at the end of last year was nine years and 10 months compared with seven years and five months at the end of 2015.  The average age of petrol cars was 10 years and four months old, of diesels 10 years and one month old, plug-in hybrids three years and four months old and battery EVs two years and six months old.

The Director of the RAC Foundation said “On the plus side for motorists, the design and build quality of modern cars means they are looking good and running reliably for far longer.  The days of them rusting away before your eyes are well and truly behind us. Even a 20-year-old car with a full service history can be a good bet for someone seeking a bargain buy that still looks up to date.  The bad news for the environment is that the overall ageing of the fleet means the replacement of fossil-fuelled cars by those with very low or zero emissions is not happening as quickly as policy-makers hoped.”

Experts have warned that rising regulatory standards, intended to improve safety and reduce emissions, are driving up the price of the average car, which has risen from £27,871 in 2013 to £45,218 today.  This is an increase of 62 per cent compared with general consumer prices which have gone up by 35 per cent in the same period; perhaps the major reason for the average age of cars rising.

Associated with these findings MoneySuperMarket has found an increase in breakdowns on England’s motorway network.  It reported 282,949 breakdowns in England in 2024, an increase of nearly 60 per cent compared with 2020 – a unsurprising difference when Covid lockdowns prevented many drivers from taking to the roads!

About nine percent of breakdowns occurred in August while 16 per cent happened on a Friday.  You now know which days and months to avoid.  The table below shows the top 10 locations for breakdowns.

Interestingly, each of these locations is an all-lane running smart motorway.  No doubt our chairman will wish to comment!

                                                                                                               Gary Whittle