Motability cars - should they be UK made?

It's always the same undercurrent on these threads. It's ok to be disabled, and to have a little help, but not to the degree it makes others feel you're getting something they'd really like. So if there is a car, it should be a Robin Reliant. Or at least have a visual acknowledgement the car has not been earned by "pulling themselves up by the bootstraps" and "making sacrifices down to the bones of our arses".

Anyway, I'm off to take my Nanna for a drive down Southend Seafront to show off her new wheels. I'll be towing her wheelchair in the sports car, as it doesn't fit in the boot.

Err, no.

Motability cars help provide jobs whatever country they come from.

I work at a citroen dealership and a hell of a lot of our business comes from the sale and servicing of motability cars. Couldn't even see us surviving if they took away motability from us. So that would be me and all my colleagues out of a job.

And FYI, I speak and deal with motability customers on a daily basis. For most, their cars are a lifeline. Cars that can be adapted, have wheelchair provision, etc.

So I'm massively pro motability.

I recon you have no 'need'? You realise that you and your family are just one accident away of being in 'need'. It's all well lecturing people that they get too much when it's not your life and when you have no lived experience of not being able to work/work full time because of illness/disability and caring responsibilities. You realise that carers who are often forced to give up work are e.g. just paid £83 in exchange for full time caring?

How would the government thinking differently and reducing disability benefits affect you personally?

Depends what people mean by exponential, really. And I will suggest that more people mean something by saying it than they know by saying it.

Remember the basic level of maths in the UK.

Concorde 😀

Its not expected to grow exponentially.

I work for a converter of cars to wheelchair accessible Motability cars. There are specific structural needs for some people, so limiting the cars to UK made only would cause problems.

Our most popular conversion at the moment is French, for engineering reasons.

Dear OP and the 40% agreeing with her/him/whatever.

Generally 20% of people don't understand the question.

And more generally 5% just don't understand.

I am a few years off but I feel your fear. I hope it goes ok for you

Dear OP and the 40% agreeing with her/him/whatever.

Clearly you are not disabled nor do you care for anyone disabled so just fuck off . How dare you try and limit disabled people more than they are already limited.

Honest to god just jump off a fucking cliff then you too can have the disabled car . Not keen? No of course you aren’t,

Until you have walked on our shoes as a carer or a disabled individual keep your stupid opinions to yourself.

Apparantly Bentley have the highest proportion of "British content". We should insist Motobility cars come from them

You don’t get good condition bonus when you have to surrender. We had to surrender because we had 18 months left and I couldn’t lift my daughter any more.

Ds is due to move to PIP and I am dreading it. I am hoping the fact they gave me deputyship without question means the change will be smooth but I don’t trust the system at all.

You could just put massive tariffs on non-UK cars just like president Trump. Look how well that works for him.

Imagine if the suggestion was to stick a “free” label on every UC spend - hold on Bob let me stick “free” on your entire shopping, on your can of beer, and on your children for using free childcare or free school lunches or school shoes or shaved into your head if you had a haircut.

I thought it was bad when people saw fit to go around challenging people using blue badges but the disability hatred is really ramping up these days.

@AM130674
i feel that pain.
I calculated how much my WAV cost me (yes using the DLA mobility component),
It was £3,000 approximately (possibly more) for down payment, with some adaptations (I can’t remember the cost of the rest of the adaptations but I think around £600).
The DLA component is £4,000 a year. Over 5 years that’s £23,000.
Then Allied Mobility can sell that car for around £15,000.
The original cost was around the £20,000 - £25,000 to the market.
Motability are supposed to be a charity and therefore not like the car manufacturers I know the government intends to look into their lack of spending the alleged £4 billion profit that hasn’t been spent in its charitable arm).

To be fair, you get a good condition bonus.

And none of the fuckers who want to shit on the disabled would ever pass up a Motability vehicle of 3 years and 10,000 miles in showroom condition. Which a lot of them are. Oh no. You couldn't shut them up about the bargain they snagged.

We had to surrender our second car to upgrade to a WAV and we did get a small element of our deposit back, was a drop in the ocean to what we had to pay for the next vehicle.

Quite. My late husband was disabled, and to cater for his scooter, equipment etc we needed a large car.

We stuck to Galaxy's and Citroen Picasso’s. 🤷‍♀️

Regarding advance payments ...

For many people with disabilities, the single most useful "adaptation" is an automatic gearbox.

And yet almost all cars on Motability with £0 advance payments were manual.

After a very long correspondence, I learned that it's the motor manufacturers who set the advance payment (not Motability) and they have no interest whatsoever in helping the disabled.

However with EVs being quite the fad, manual transmissions are getting a bit 20th century, so it's less of an issue.

However advance payments can easily top £10,000 and that is money you will never see again. Even if you have to surrender the car mid lease.

Some people in some areas can claim PIP online now, but not all people and not all areas.

Although the pp was talking about the assessment. Not all of them are online.

Assessments are often (imo) online

Pip is not online. You have to physically fill in a paper form and send it back.

So long as the balloon displays a Union Jack, I'm all for it. I think it would be easy to winch the wheelchair