Following a House vote to extend the cash for clunkers program by $2 billion, the federal government has revised the dealer protocol for dealing with trade-in clunkers. Whereas the original program called for dealers to disable vehicles upon trade-in, dealers now have the option to postpone engine disablement until after the U.S. rebate is received.
As several videos circling the Web reveal, under the previous guidelines of the CARS program, dealers were required to destroy a clunker’s engine upon trade-in. However, with funds for the CARS program expiring well before the November 1 cutoff date, many dealers are worried that their rebate applications could be denied, leaving them with worthless hunks of metal.
Under the new guidelines, dealers now have the option to delay engine disablement for up to seven days after receiving their government rebate. By amending the rules, dealers now have a partial safeguard should an application be denied due to lack of funds or other reasons.
“The government has concerns about how much money is in the program, and it doesn’t want to leave dealers high and dry,” Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association, told Automotive News.
The Senate is expected to vote on the $2 billion CARS extension later this week.
