West Berkshire MP explores the green power of KWE Jaguar
When Newbury MP Richard Benyon visited the Newbury Business Group a few months ago one of the other guests in the room was the charming owner of KWE Jaguar, Chris Knowles. Morgan PR has worked with KWE in the past and it was great to introduce Chris Knowles and Richard Benyon to one another and ponder the potential.
KWE ‘remanufacture’ Jaguar cars and do so with a level of customer service we have rarely seen that reflects the passion that the roar of a Jaguar evokes. Certainly Chris Knowles is passionate about this unique approach to recycling that sees classic models given a powerful new lease of life with a fraction of the carbon footprint of building a new car – however green the new car might claim to be. Naturally we felt this would be of interest to our local MP.
True to the power of networking, this led to the MP paying a visit to KWE at New Greenham Park, Newbury. It turned out that Richard Benyon is a Jaguar fan, and he was able to see firsthand how classic cars can be remanufactured at a fraction of the energy and environmental cost of new cars.
Chris Knowles impressed Richard with the need to stop building new cars for the sake of it, most of which within a few years were sent to the breakers and argued the government's current ‘scrappage’ scheme whereby owners of older cars are given £2,000 discounts as an incentive to scrap their car and buy a new one is clearly a blatant attempt to appease the new car manufacturing lobby while ignoring the needs of other equally worthy industrial sectors.
Chris Knowles wisely questions that with so little UK-owned car manufacturing in the UK one questions exactly who benefits from this initiative.
He explained, “Most importantly, the push to throw away re-usable cars in favour of digging yet more holes in the planet to make yet more unnecessary cars is an environmental nonsense. Has no one seen Southampton docks overflowing with new cars with nowhere to go? “Virtually none of the materials salvaged from scrapped cars can be re-used for making new ones, and some of the rare minerals and metals used can never be recycled – and there are only a few years-worth left to be mined.
“Hopefully, our MP's visit will bring some sense into Westminster - especially as Richard Benyon is Shadow Environment Minister!”
He was encouraged when Richard Benyon wrote this to KWE: "Thank you for this excellent briefing. I so enjoyed my visit to your business. I am a total convert to the idea of making cars last longer. I hope to be able to use some of the facts below in Parliament if and when Darling or Mandleson talk about their scrappage plans."
Here at Morgan PR we are wondering whether the MP had any favourite Jaguars from the impressive catalogue of classic conversions that KWE has performed. We think that the XJS V12 convertible in Westminster Blue must surely be a contender?