With us they decided we would need a large suv or family estate to take both the wheelchair and for the person hoist front passenger side.
The grant paperwork we received stated this and the maximum grant was based on what they deemed suitable on the scheme. They take into account the drivers licence type as well so for us even though I’ve chosen automatic cars for the past 17 or so years, I have a full manual licence so the grant was based on manual cars only. They won’t offer a grant based on advance payment prices for automatic cars unless your licence is automatic only.
There was a separate page with suggestions of manual suvs, ( no estates on the list) they thought would be suitable but we could use the grant on any vehicle on the scheme as long as it met the requirements of being a large suv or estate.
The dealership cannot enter the grant details into the system unless it matches what you are trying to order I.e. if we tried to order a Mini Cooper it would have been refused as the paperwork states it must be a large suv or estate. It does not specify transmission so it can still be used on an automatic, it’s just the grant itself isn’t based on automatic prices. We were still able to order the large suv with automatic box as the grant covered it. Usually automatics are more expensive on the list but the one we ordered was cheaper than some of the manuals.
I don’t know anything about the 50% you can add. This was never mentioned and isn’t shown in any of our paperwork.
Hope that helps.