The BBC and The Telegraph both pointed me at the Honest John site today where this story can be found.
I must admit that I got a bit distracted by the adverts to the right...
where two different men seem to own the same wallet with the same picture of the same car.
But I digress.
The story looks at the survival rates of mass-produced British cars particularly from the '60s, '70s and '80s.
The car that seems to be faring the worst is the Austin Allegro...
...with 642,340 built and 291 remaining in the UK, for a total of 0.0453% left.
The BBC report concentrates on the 1980s and is particularly worried about survival rates of cars from that decade. It is quite scathing about the Scrappage Scheme of a few years back and, speaking as someone who didn't get to take advantage of it, I wholeheartedly agree.
This got me thinking about the car I owned from that decade, my 1980 Triumph Dolomite 1500HL in vomit yellow. The Honest John site lets you look up just about any car right up to modern ones so I checked out The Dolomite and found some nice charts and, basically some good news:
In December 2007, there were 2,373 registered
By December 2011, 2,159 of those were left
On average, 53 were lost each year, or 2.3%
At that rate, it will take 29 years until half of those left today are lost
I guess that once a car reaches a certain age, people will look after them.
I then got distracted by Top 20: Fastest disappearing cars from UK roads. This list contains a few non-surprises like Daewoos and Fiats, one fairly surprising entry - the Vauxhall Cavalier and car I actually don't remember - the Sao Penza.
In case you're wondering, Sao Penza. Population in 2007: 13, population in 2011: 3, for 23.08% of '07 cars remaining.
I'll alert David Attenborough.
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