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Lotus Cars Ltd, the Motability con, and more....

They choose to use one of their benefit payments to lease the car. If their payment would be say, £400/month, that's the most expensive lease they can take out unless they choose to pay the extra from other funds. You might be able to 'take the pish' to get the benefit, but not to get the car.
You get a kia or dacia type vehicle as the basic range , and can upgrade with an advance payment to something like a t roc or hyundai tuscon. With a ceiling of around £35,000. Seems reasonable. How the OP conflates Lotus production going to Chinna with the reintroduction of "invalid" carriages is beyond me.
 
Just buy them a Dacia Spring. It will turn out a lot cheaper.
 
Did the choice of car used to be more limited. Lots of people seemed to have MK2 Micras as a disability car in the 1990s.
 
My present car is an ex-mobility scheme vehicle - a Honda Civic, one of the last British built ones.
Think the Mobility scheme leased the car rather than bought it as I bought at 4 years old from a Honda dealer, not the suppling dealer but it had gone back into the Honda approved cars stock.
I also think as part of the mobility scheme it wasn't covered by the Honda warranty as according to the service book it was serviced by Halfords; the replacement tyres were as originally fitted to the car - Premium Continentals. I have both the service book and a 'detailed' service history document which listed dates of services, tyre changes, etc.

There is a couple of odd problems with it - think caused by the person who had it originally using the drivers door as an assistance to getting in and out as a plastic trim of the drivers door has a retaining clip broke, the cap and 'dipstick' on the washer bottle missing and the user had left lots of waypoints in the SatNav - so I know where he lives (lived).

Have I any problems with it being ex-Mobility scheme - No. Interestingly after I'd had the car less than a month the dealer who sold it to me offered to buy it back at more than I'd paid for it.
 
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Did the choice of car used to be more limited. Lots of people seemed to have MK2 Micras as a disability car in the 1990s.
I worked in the motortrade all the way through the 90’s. Motability was one of our biggest contracts.

I can’t remember Micras ever coming in under Motability.
 
Hub Nut in Wales (blogger on You Tube ) has an Invacar and tears about in it !
 
It may work out more cost effective for the taxpayer for Mobility to be limited to a single car manufacturer, preferably UK built.
For example the Nissan Qashqai.
That’s a good ideas. But Motabilty won’t be allowed to do it.
 
I am now quite disabled, but claim absolutely nothing apart from a bus pass, for me and a n other to accompany me. My original partner became disabled, but all we claimed was free tax for the car, my car, a car which I provided at the time, to run her about, I had a second car, a company car. For a while, after she passed away, I made some use of her mobility scooter, before buying myself something a bit more capable.

I now pay my own road tax in full, the only concession I make is that I now have a blue-badge, for what use it is - because it seems most of these seem to be now used by friends and family, blocking up the disabled spaces.

Yes, I do think the entire scheme needs a thorough overall, along with tackling the misuse of the blue badges.
 
Could be wrong but I think I read that if you are a pensioner you cannot claim for mobility car, however if you claimed before becoming being a pensioner it continues
 
it should just be 3 types
basic car mini size
car that can take a wheel chair
family size car that can take a wheel chair
Thats it no top of the range cars /sports models etc etc
Loads of people taking the pure pish with the scheme
Have you looked on their website?

I just have.

There is a very basic range of cars available in exchange for your benefit. If you want anything bigger/ better, you have to pay extra from your own pocket. It can run to many thousands. If you want a large WAV, you can pay an additional £35K.

Even the smallest WAVs cost an extra £4,400.
 
Have you looked on their website?

I just have.

There is a very basic range of cars available for your benefit. If you want anything bigger/ better, you have to pay extra from your own pocket. It can run to many thousands. If you want a large WAV, you can pay an additional £35K.

Even the smallest WAVs cost an extra £4,400.
and rightly so but is all the maintenance /tyres etc etc still covered or do you pay a supplement on how much extra that all costs over the period ?
 
I qualify for a motability car but don't want one.
MM's post is full of crap. Tiresome.
Such as:
cars given away to just about anyone who complains well enough, to be driven by their extended family and parked in supermarket disabled bays with impunity.
is stupid and wrong.

I don't believe we should fund taking their able bodied kids to school, their extended family on long motorway trips, nor allowing their families to use their Motability car for any other purpose than the mobility of the person awarded the car.
You want them to have a separate car for taking their kids to school??
The car can only be used by the claimant, or by others for the purpose of the claimant. Doing the claimant's shopping would qualify but it can't park in a disabled bay if the claimant isn't in it. Others cannot use it for their own shopping, for example.

The main idea of the scheme was to allow working age disabled people get to work.

To have one for 3 years costs you in lost benefit £12019.80
The non-basic cars in the range would cost you up to an extra £18k over the 3 years. Best isn't all that great. There are several models in the list which don't sell very well. Top of the range WAS a Mazda CX-6 hybrid. 2.5litre petrol plus lectric so it's quick, but drives like a dog.
You don't keep the car, so it costs you 18 + 12 = £30k over 3 years. Yes you get insurance and maintenance & AA paid for.

As a pensioner you're old so ins is cheap. So buy an ex mobility car at 3 years old - or another of your own choice. (But the ex-ms ones are well serviced and usually have done few miles). It's yours, you probably won't have 18k depreciation, use your 12k to maintain it. You still get free car tax. (Unless someone else uses it as well for their own purposes).

It's a nuts scheme. I got PIP before my pension age, so could get a car now, but if I applied not having had the pip for those years, I couldn't get one now. The benefit (I think) is then called something else, but its like you're expected to be half immobile and/or not working after pension, so no car. I think non-pip pension age benefits are all means tested,
The 12k is free of tax , so if you're paying 45% the payout is what you'd get from 21818 of taxable income.
 
As a pensioner you're old so ins is cheap.
Surely when you are a pensioner, you are well past the sweet spot for car insurance and are starting to get into the 'slow reaction' group of drivers and it starts going up further, the older you get?
 
I qualify for a motability car but don't want one.
MM's post is full of crap. Tiresome.
Such as:

is stupid and wrong.


You want them to have a separate car for taking their kids to school??
The car can only be used by the claimant, or by others for the purpose of the claimant. Doing the claimant's shopping would qualify but it can't park in a disabled bay if the claimant isn't in it. Others cannot use it for their own shopping, for example.

The main idea of the scheme was to allow working age disabled people get to work.
Let me expand, because I don't believe my post is full of crap, and I believe my sentiments are echoed elsewhere amongst those who PAY for the benefits you enjoy.
You are misinformed and blinkered if you believe that the Motability scheme is not widely misused; simply observing those who blue-badge park at supermarkets reveals that the 'not all disabilities are visible' argument fails to explain the result that it appears that 90% are very able to walk with shopping the extra 20 yards to the normal parking spaces, thereby they are preventing those who need the closer spaces from using them.

To your other cherry-picked points:
No, their kids can walk to school. Walking means exercise and less screen time - win-win.
Stating the car can only be used be used for , etc., etc. doesn't prevent the misuse I am highlighting, and this is the main point - the system is being widely misused. This misuse costs the country, surely you can see that? I agree we should try to help those who are less able, but we should remember that each one who cheats the system also takes resources away from those who genuinely need them.

To answer other comments:
The proposal to introduce a modern equivalent of the Invacar is to make a car suited to only those who qualify, and using the power that government has to keep gainfully employed the skilful soon-to-be-redundant employees of a car assembly plant in Norfolk. For those who talk of stigma, well yes, some may be stigmatised, but surely it would be wrong if the receipt of any handout/benefit didn't bring some stigma along with it.
 
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