My scrappage scheme: 'to get 3,000 for my old Polo against a new Hyundai i20 was great'

Alistair Harvey from Terenure, Dublin, was another buyer who hadn’t really intended on buying a brand new car when the time came to trade in his 1999 Volkswagen Polo – his first car, which he had owned for three and a half years and had bought with 100,000 miles already on the clock.

“I wanted to upgrade my Polo, because it was starting to show its 10 or 11 years. I was just looking at getting a second-hand car, and when I went to my local dealership I was shown that I could effectively pay the same amount to trade in for a new Hyundai i20 as I would from buying a used car that didn’t involve the scrappage deal. I know very little about cars, and I don’t have that much interest in them but, when I saw the offer available, it made sense,” says Harvey.

“Not having really known much about the scrappage deal in the first place, I found that it worked out well, because I ended up in a brand new car when I thought I was going to get into a second-hand car.

“I would have been delighted to get €100 for the car, but to get €3,000 for it against a new model was great, and I found the whole process very straightforward.”

Harvey says it is unlikely he would have bought a new car if it hadn’t been available under the scrappage scheme. “I landed about the middle of where I had budgeted, money-wise, and I feel like I got quite a good deal.”