Ford has announced a car and van scrappage scheme offering incentives up to £7,000 for customers, of any brand, to trade-in and scrap their old petrol or diesel cars or vans for a new Ford vehicle.

Applicable to any pre-Euro 5 vehicle, registered by 31st December 2009, the Ford scrappage program will run to the end of the year and is effective for registrations from September 1 to December 31 2017.

“Ford shares society’s concerns over air quality”, said Andy Barratt, chairman and managing director of Ford of Britain.

“Removing generations of the most polluting vehicles will have the most immediate positive effect on air quality, and this Ford scrappage scheme aims to do just that.

“We don’t believe incentivising sales of new cars goes far enough and we will ensure that all trade-in vehicles are scrapped. Acting together we can take hundreds of thousands of the dirtiest cars off our roads and out of our cities.”

He said medium to longer-term actions to improve air quality include a plug-in hybrid version of the Ford Transit Custom, due to start trials later this year. The Transit PHEV is planned for commercial introduction in 2019 and is part of Ford’s total investment of $4.5bn in electrified vehicles by 2020, which also includes a fully electric, long-range SUV.