Cash For Clunkers Program

I vented about this last weekend on my Blog "Cash for clunkers= FAIL" the gist of it being I was more than willing to "Invest" $10,000 in a new Escape to chase in, my vehicle is most definately a "clunker", MPG is bad but it don't qualify because I bought it in March.
 
Details of Cash for clunker cars.gov
fuel econonmy of your vehicle fueleconomy.gov

Imp points: 18 miles/g or less ,Vehicle must be less than 25 years old,owned for atleast year,1 rebate/customer.
 
Steve Miller OK said:
There are actually people out there hedging that money will be there a year from now for this program and buying "clunkers" now for $300-500 and holding on to them for a year (to meet the ownership requirement) in hopes of getting $4500 for them toward a new car and then selling said new car with the built in $4500 profit, less tag/tax upkeep. Not a bad idea if there were to still be money around then.
I love it when people exploit poor ideas. Cash for clunkers is a poor idea...
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Are they hoping the program is renewed? Its set to expire Nov. 1 or until funds are exhausted.
 
Skip, that's my best guess. I have spent the past few minutes trying to find the article about it to no avail. I'll post here if I find it.
 
Haha, AP is reporting the "Cash for Clunkers" program has been suspended already.
No links to stories yet but it looks like www.msnbc.com is all over it.
 
Many news sources are reporting this, but the thing to do is call a dealership...they'll be all over it.

The program was stupid really. Yeah...lets get people out of their paid off vehicles and into an expensive (and often financed) vehicle. Let's also add to the tons of junk cars that have to be disposed of and create more consumption with more new products. And what, for the sake of getting a vehicle with better gas mileage. Nah...we need to see that making a vehicle stay on the road longer is much better than rapid overturn.
 
Jason Foster said:
Many news sources are reporting this, but the thing to do is call a dealership...they'll be all over it.

The program was stupid really. Yeah...lets get people out of their paid off vehicles and into an expensive (and often financed) vehicle. Let's also add to the tons of junk cars that have to be disposed of and create more consumption with more new products. And what, for the sake of getting a vehicle with better gas mileage. Nah...we need to see that making a vehicle stay on the road longer is much better than rapid overturn.
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This program is very stupid. What makes it worse is that daddy government is requiring that the vehicles turned in be destroyed. They have to put stuff in the engines to freeze them up and destroy the drive train. Then the car istself is shreaded and the metal is being sent to China. What a great program this is. I have such faith in our politicians (COUGH COUGH).
 
A dumb program indeed, especially since the traded in vehicles are destroyed, what if it is a perfectly reliable vehicle?! Why destroy it, your just wasting more resources to build a replacement. Its a pathetic excuse to say we're more "green"

It wont jumpstart car sales, the dealers will be swamped while the program is in effect and go right back to where it was when it started, only now we have a bunch of overconfident people who couldn't afford a new car in the first place digging themselves into debt...

But hey, if you have an old beater that is borderline worth getting rid of, and you're well enough off to finanace a new car, might as well jump on it. I just think too many of the wrong people will be taking advantage of this program.
 
Does the program have any sort of clause mandating that the new car must be assembled in the US, and/or (at the very least) be composed of x% US-manufactured components? Blowing a billion bucks to support Korean, Chinese and Mexican autoworkers doesn't make me feel very warm and fuzzy.
 
Yea I asked my wife who works for Hyundai about all these vehicles they have waiting to be smashed. They have like 50 now. One is a old school station wagon and I'd love to get the drive train out of that! But yep, same thing, they have to be smashed. I agree it's the stupidest thing ever to destroy a perfectly good car instead of trying to smartly recycle them. I'd gladly give a couple hundred for that station wagon. It's sadly funny though since the vehicles they are selling are mostly made in Korea.

What they should have done was only apply this to only solar/hybrid/electric vehicles made in the USA.
 
D. Hayes said:
What they should have done was only apply this to only solar/hybrid/electric vehicles made in the USA.
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Yeah...that's the other thing....why should the Japs, Koreans, and Europeans benefit from this...screw them.....this should have been US companies only!

And of course, if this program continued (or is reinstated), it'll also deplete the availability of cheap cars for poor people...who could careless about MPG, when all they want is a $500 car to get them to and from their min. wage job. Once again, gov. screwing the poor people. Which means more small towns we chase through will be worse off. Really need to help those people...not the rich idiots on the west and east coasts.
 
Greater than 50% of all "foreign" brand cars are made in the US by US workers. In fact, the Toyota Camry has 75% of its parts made in America and its assembled here as well. The Camry, Solara, Avalon, and Venza are all made in Kentucky. Honda has plants in Ohio, Indiana, and Alabama.

So the cash for clunkers program should only support Americans workers who are associated with traditional American car companies? What about the American workers who work at the Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc. plants in the US?

I can understand only allowing cars MADE in the USA to be part of the program, but limiting it to US companies only is ludicrous.

Jason Foster said:
Yeah...that's the other thing....why should the Japs, Koreans, and Europeans benefit from this...screw them.....this should have been US companies only!

And of course, if this program continued (or is reinstated), it'll also deplete the availability of cheap cars for poor people...who could careless about MPG, when all they want is a $500 car to get them to and from their min. wage job. Once again, gov. screwing the poor people. Which means more small towns we chase through will be worse off. Really need to help those people...not the rich idiots on the west and east coasts.
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Scott Weberpal said:
Greater than 50% of all "foreign" brand cars are made in the US by US workers. In fact, the Toyota Camry has 75% of its parts made in America and its assembled here as well. The Camry, Solara, Avalon, and Venza are all made in Kentucky. Honda has plants in Ohio, Indiana, and Alabama.

So the cash for clunkers program should only support Americans workers who are associated with traditional American car companies? What about the American workers who work at the Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc. plants in the US?

I can understand only allowing cars MADE in the USA to be part of the program, but limiting it to US companies only is ludicrous.
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Exactly!

And on the flip side, GM, Ford, etc. assemble many US-market vehicles in Canada and Mexico. Check the VIN number before buying! Numbers beginning with 1, 4, or 5 are assembled in the US. 2 = Canada and 3 = Mex. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_number

I think the car's window tag shows the site of assembly and source country of the major drivetrain components(?)
 
The congress voted another $2 billion in emergency funding today to keep this going since the 1st $1 billion was spent in a week!! Thats 250,000 vehicles sold this week! At least the auto industry is making out well. Not only do we give them billions in handouts but then use taxpayer money to help them sell more cars.

I wish it included used cars also. I am about to trade in my 1994 explorer for a 2008 explorer. I could only qualify for the $3500 but thats still alot more then my trade in value and the MPG difference qualifies :(
 
I have heard a few people give out some info that is not 100% accurate, so here are some facts:

--You qualify if your vehicle gets less than 18mpg and your new car must get atleast 22mpg (most trucks are 18mpg)

--The only website with officialy rules for the rebate plan is cars.gov

Let me also say that I don't get why there are so many people complaining about this program. For once, the government is spending money which the vast majority of American's can take full advantage of. It stimulus money in action unlike HUGE pay off's to big corporations keeping them afloat so that they can pay off their bonus checks (yes i realize not every did this). Out of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent, can anone point to one billion of that which has had this impact.

With that being said, I would agree that the fact that the engine just gets destroyed is a silly way to dispose of the used vehicles afterward and more than likely this program will not keep car companies afloat for a long period of time. BUT, what it will do is put some of those workers back into jobs for at least a few weeks. That is not all the time in the world, but it does create $$$ for them to go off and spend/pay their bills and it also buys time for th entire economy to come back around.

This was not intended to be political in anyway, just my thoughts on how the program could help.
 
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