The plea comes after the dealer announced half year profits of £8.6m, down from £13m last year. “The car scrappage scheme has helped, and we would like it to continue into next year” said CEO Ken Sturgeon, adding “We have around 3,500 orders from it so far, 55% of which has been delivered.

Revenue at the dealer for the 6 months to June 2009 came in at £870m, down from the £1bn reported for the same period last year. Lookers said the scheme had helped performance but that it remained cautious regarding the outlook for the new car market.

Sturgeon noted that whilst demand for new cars was down, “used cars, parts and after-sales are going really well.”

The Car Scrappage Scheme which launched in May of this year is due to end February 2010, or when the £300m put aside by the government for the scheme has been used up, whichever is the sooner. A 2.4% year on year rise in July of new UK car sales has been largely credited to the scheme.

However, over the half the funds have been used up already, suggesting the scheme will end later this year at the current run rate, several months short of the original expected end date.

Retirees are flocking to showrooms having thought through the economics and opportunities on the UK forecourts. Trevor Finn, CEO of Pendragon has said the large proportion of interest in the scrappage scheme was coming from retired motorists. One Citroen dealer last week reported over 70% of scrappage scheme enquiries coming from the older driver. Pendragon believes that this is the emerging trend.

Trevor Finn went on to confirm -  “A high proportion of the people who have applied are people who are on fixed incomes, particularly retired people who have had cars for a long time and are paying in cash.” The ecomonics are such that the retired demographic consider the scrappage scheme’s £2,000 subsidy to offer better value when compared to the current low return achieved on savings accounts and the poor and volatile performance of equity investments. Baby boomers are saying ‘Live the dream, buy the car’.

Pendragon’s Finn went on to confirm that he believed the car scrappage scheme is starting to drive showroom enquiries.

Dealerships have already begun selling the scrappage vehicles to scrap merchants, with Cartakeback manager, Graham Price saying “The indications are that several thousand cars have been pre-sold under the scheme.” Cartakeback handles the transfer of scrappage vehicles between car dealers and scrap yards, and is estimated to deal with around 70% of the scrappage volume during the scheme.