Scrapheap Challenge is a British television show where teams of contestants build a working machine that can perform a specific task, using materials available in a scrapyard.

A typical episode featured a competition between two 4-person teams, each consisting of three regular members (with one designated the captain), plus an expert in the field related to the particular challenge.

Assistant producer Eve Kay had the idea for the show after watching a scene in the movie Apollo 13, where NASA engineers had only a short period of time to construct a carbon dioxide filter out of parts available on the space capsule.

From series 2, the show was renamed Scrapheap Challenge and featured a knockout tournament between teams drawn from the general public.

At the end of each episode a battle to determine the week's champion scrappers took place in a public venue in front of crowds of cheering fans.

However, a few of the teams managed to avoid taking the SVA test, either by using an unmodified car chassis, such as the Chaos Crew in Series 2, who placed the body shell from an ice cream truck onto the unchanged chassis of a Range Rover, or by using their livelihood to classify their vehicle as agricultural equipment (The Barley Pickers in series 1).

Former North Dakota Governor Ed Schafer and future Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie were two of many notable people to appear on the show.

Schafer was on during the fifth season as a member of the High Flyers which lost to the Jet Doctors in the Fifth Series finale.

The show was reformatted as Junkyard Mega-Wars to consist of two regular captains, who each select three people to help in the challenge.