Are they stopping it because they have run out of funds, or because dealers are threatening to drop the program due to lack of payment? $4,500 X 700,000 is a bit over $3,000,000,000. Are they planning on burning through the remaining $2 billion over the weekend?

Well, now no one can complain, right? Car makers got a bunch of new cars moved, old cars are now off the roads, and the banks are lending money to people. Now, car makers will complain in a year or two from depressed buying because they “helped” people buy cars now all at once, those old vehicles will never be used or sold for people who could have actually used them, (of which, its cleaner to run my 95 Tahoe then to build another new vehicle), and those people who bought those cars but couldnt afford them will default in a few months and banks collapse because so many people defaulted. Whoa de ja vu.

Sigh, people don’t think too far ahead do they? Great, someone bought a new ford focus thats more fuel efficient, but think of all the materials that went into making that car, transporting those materials, the mining, making the car, using electricity, then burning more fuel to move those cars, so you environmentalists, where does it make it greener to drive a focus vs keep my 95 tahoe in the long run?

There are so many stories and comments these days who knows the truth behind this program. I’ll go with the money for the program having been used up.

Interested in seeing the sales figures for the first couple of months AFTER this program has ended and all those sales have been delivered. Will future sales volume crash or did the program drive consumer confidence and sales will continue to remain strong?

Shame they couldn’t keep it around longer. I guess it goes to show just how much car makers actually give up on incentive programs.

I’m just praying sales don’t fall underneath floor now. The program was the only reason sales were up, and now, its over.

-iluvamcars

I’m interest in seeing if auto sales plummit back to their previous levels, if I was in the market for a car after Monday, id be pissed that I get no clunkers cash and id decide to stick with what I got

Aside from the ’servicable vehicle’ issue, I would be extremely concerned that the government didn’t have a little more foresight when they were planing this deal. What else haven’t they planned for in the future?….

The August sales numbers should be extraordinary. You have to remember there were also the usual suspects out there buying vehicles. Not everyone had a clinker to get rid of.

and now gm ,and chrysler will put a gun to the head of its chosen few dealers to restock cobalts, calibers, avengers, so they can sit on the lot another 6 months , cash for clunkers will have done nothing , chyslers jim press will prove that , guaranted these genius”s will have lots full of the sa
me cars and will have have to rebate them to death fFIRE JIM PRESS!

I wonder if they will bring C4C back later in the year or earlier next year to spurs demand for the 2010 models.
It will be interesting to see if after it’s over how much % of drop on sales will take place.

So what if sales drop after this wekend … this was never a long-term solution. And, as a percentage, how many vehicles were turned in as clunkers compared to what could have been turned in as a total if the program included ANY vehicle (as long as it was “upgraded” to a more efficient mpg hike)?

Any more tools want to give their useless opinions?

Hope there is time left to get these clunkers off the road…

Funny article –Top 10 TV Cars Worthy Of Cash For Clunkers

http://tvtango.com/news/detail/id/77

This whole C4C thing is a bandaid. If anybody has read the news today, you would see that more people are filing for and collecting unemployement than what was initially reported. The economy is not going to get any better anytime soon. The car manufacturers are going to be in the same boat as they were before this program started.

I don’t know what LaHood is talking about, but jump starting the automobile industry will not be sustainable until the economy recovers. So, the wokers that he states were rehired, will probaly be let go again, which will add to the unemployment figures.

Makes you wonder how he got his job. This isn’t rocket science. It’s common sense. Maybe if I lacked common sense I could get his job and a fat paycheck to go with it.

I also agree with Sector_15504 and the last paragraph of the article. Too bad there are not more people in this world that can think ahead. This program was not the brightest idea the government ever had, nor will it be the last. The intention was good, but that is as far as it goes.

Sometimes I really wonder how people make it through life.

The government was speculating that the program wouldn’t work as good as it did because many of the cars people had wouldn’t properly qualify. But we are in a time where every little bit helps. If they bring the program back one day, it will really help the economy But I didn’t know that it was going to end so early

Expect to see that the cash paid out resulted in a lot of fraudulent payments for vehicles that were not junked and/or not really qualified for a rebate. This is in spite of a slow moving bureaucracy with strict rules about qualifying vehicles.

Oh and the amount of fraud won’t be revealed for many months and without fanfare – hopefully we’ll remember that before we do a Cash-4-Appliances program. Oh drat – it is too late http://consumerist.com/5342192/coming-soon-+-cash-for-clunkers-home-appliance-edition

Well, the government seems have done their best, just as the Inside Line says: As a sales motivator, Cash for Clunkers has certainly been good for stimulating car sales. But the government can only do so much to help.
Although the program would end before we expected, and only run for a couple of weeks, it do contribute to the car industry, General Motors is enjoying a recent sales uptick and Chrysler had announced it would increase its production.

http://replicajewelry.easyjournal.com

Jane44 -

Someone trying to make fun of my name?

Yes! Finally, this automotive holocaust will soon be coming to end. How Ironic it ends on my birthday. That just made my birthday much better. But who knows what stupid thing our stupid government is planning next.

According to John Stassel, we just took collected taxes from everybody and gave few assholes who bought clankers in the first place (they could bought lighter and more fuel efficient vehicles to begin with) our hard earned money. In olden days it was called misappropriation of funds. There were no problems solved: September, October will be dreadful now.

Obama: “pulling the plug on clunkers is just like pulling the plug on grandma.”

the doubters in this thread are the same idiots would have let gm and chrysler liquidate, causing untold chaos with the rest of the economy…c4c has been a very direct and very successful method of stimulus…and yes, stimulus is not permanent, it’s meant to stimulate in the short term because you’re experiencing a short term that really sucks!

you people claiming nobody has vision are not showing any vision yourselves because you’re not presenting any viable alternative…what is your great plan that’s so much better than what has occurred? the world is waiting…

Leftwing,
I am with you. I laugh at people criticizing the Obama administration. How easy they forgot that the last 8 years the clown we had as president did not do anything good and immensely helped this country gets into this whole mess in the first place.
They are not offering ANY viable solution, so at least let Obama play his cards and see what happens. I doubt it will get much worse than what the last republican administration did.

C4C is a failure to me. When it was first announced, it most likely reduced car sales and created pent up demand. Now all that demand is gone along with all the future buyers who just bought their cars now.

This means that the next couple months, dealer lots are going to be extremely slow since there is no big incentive.

Also, many of these people driving clunkers are not used to car payments or increase in other costs (car insurance anyone?) and may get their car repo’d or bankrupt them.

Hopefully it isn’t how I see it…

For those lamenting the passing of C4C, not to worry! I’m sure there are more bailouts designed to fix problems they’ll never solve. After all, we all know how efficient the government is with providing services. I mean, look at the quality of care at the VA, how streamlined and financially responsible the post office has been for decades. My goodness, look at how efficiently the government has handled this very program: No stated goals, no accountability, complete lack of planning for resources, cost estimates for implementing and maintaining the program that were never understood or taken into account.

For those defending this stuff, my goodness, do you guys know how to balance your checkbooks? Would you spend money like this? If you would, have you been bankrupt before?

This legislation could be the poster child for bad public policy.

And to the name calling, cool it. You can disagree without having to resort to that (or at least you should). Besides, when you name call, it makes you look like your position isn’t strong enough to stand on its own. Hmmmm….

Great, more tools than I thought.

It’s 3 billion … big deal … the 10% drop in the value of your worthless dollar only recently has cost your country far more than 3 billion vis-a-vis the majority of the rest of the world; you’re ALL poorer … instead, you whine about helping your countrymen and women. Not to mention the trillions given to financial entities. It was a temporary measure that worked, only addressing a small portion of the used vehicle market.

This place is teeming with fools … more FACT.

Impulsive,

Profligate government spending is the reason for the pain of the dollar. I don’t believe most of the other posters here were for bailing out much of anyone else either. Cash for clunker is built on the Broken Window Fallacy. Government taking your money and giving it to someone else did not make the economy in aggregate richer. The government creating jobs is not wealth – it is merely re-allocation. Wealth is created when better ways of doing things are created. Hell, we could all get paid by the federal government to dig holes on odd days and fill them back in on even – that is a do-work job – we as a society are NOT wealthier.

If you believe the government, borrowing money to pay for C4C is wealth then here is an idea. You should show us by charging up $30,000 on credit card and they gleefully come back and explain your new-found wealth. Until then try to keep up and understand the problem.

I’m well aware why your dollar is headed MUCH lower, genius, and it’s NOT rooted in this administration. It’s been falling since 2001. Greenspan takes a HUGE part of the blame … that’s a digression with respect to my main point though. I’m tired of hearing whining here about a paltry sum of money spent in trying to lessen the blow of a serious economic downturn NOT due to the failure of the industry itself. With the insane sums given to the financial industry for gambling and losing, why is this never discussed … instead, trying to help with, relatively speaking, next to nothing is bashed as waste. As to your point about reallocation, it’s all about reallocation … either you help each other out to some degree where unemployment is cushioned through programs such as this one or you pay another way … welfare and unemployment take your taxes to pay.

Where have I argued that this program is a wealth-resulting program? Are you literate? Do you have reading comprehension problems? Again, this program tries to make shallower the effects of an economic downturn. Your $30,000 credit card analogy is a FAILURE as it should have read $30 due to the C4C, and $2,870 due to the financial industry.

Until YOU get the big picture, keep your trap shut and go do some homework before you come back here and post SHIAT.

Like I stated, this site is teeming with fools … just plain FACT.

THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!!

And with that…3 BILLION ($3,00,000,000) was pissed away…most of it going to foreign companies.

This C4C has been a disaster for the consumer, automakers, and mostly the dealers.

If these clowns can’t run a simple rebate scheme like this…they have no business monkeying with our health care.

Oh…and for all of the Obama cheerleaders:

Bush made the economy 19% larger than when he took office, unemployment was less than when Clinton was in office, and remember back in February when Obama told us that if the stimulus was not passed, April’s unemployment numbers would be as high as 8.5%.

We passed the stimulus…and April’s unemployment number was 8.9%. And we have a bonehead vice president that says insane things like:

“We must spend money to keep from going bankrupt”.

Unbelievable.

Please change your name to “THE FAILURE” … you’re an idiot, plain and simple. You forgot to add that Bush is God and Obama is an imbecile … please add that to your next post.

@Impulsive

Greenspan, a problem, agreed. Regarding paltry – not a chance. It is 3 FREAKIN billion dollars. Yes it pales in comparison to the insane backing financial institutions have got. That is a straw man.

It is a failure of the industry indirectly – supported by banksters to lend people money that had a low likelihood of repayment (e.g., GMAC). The US auto industry’s size was supported by a debt binge. There is now substantial excess capacity in the industry and that needs to be reduced through (unfortunately) idling capacity through closings, consolidations and bankruptcies. Prompting people to binge on more debt with C4C is the entirely wrong direction. This is rooted in the distortion created by a debt bubble (Greenspan again).

Finding ways to pay people to keep building too many cars is not going to help. This is going to result in changes in the economy (reduced auto mfg) and a lot of pain. Provide unemployment, relocation and training. Quit pretending we are going back to 17 million units/year. Very little bailout money has gone to unemployment or re-training, sadly. Jobs and wealth are not the same thing – Cuba has jobs, N. Korea has jobs – they do not have wealth. I don’t want jobs, I want an economy that has job contributing to wealth but first we need to either pay down or liquidate excess debt not add to it. Government transfer payments do not create wealth.

Afterwards you degraded into a political diatribe for whatever reason.

C4C is another distortion, like debt, in the auto industry. In a recent survey 25% of C4C purchasers regret spending the money and being saddled with an average of $16000 in new debt. We spiked sales to, maybe, 11 million units form 9 million. Edmunds.com has seen new car purchase interest decline 11% from June’s very low numbers. It will be interesting to see if Sept and Oct result in a return to trend (9-10million) or something potentially even worse. This is a credit contraction recession, not a normal business/inventory recession. Debt is being reduced, liquidated and written off. Encouraging more debt is kicking the can down the road.