Cash for KlunkersFollow

The increased business is what it's all about. Sure, the car dealership doesn't actually make any more money per car, but there have been anecdotes of dealerships who went from 100% inventory to 40% inventory in one week. They literally sold 60% of the cars on their lot because of this program.

Pluses:

- People who want a new car get a pretty sweet deal with a $4000 rebate

- Car dealerships who want to clean out their 2009 inventory in preparation for the 2010 models do so without gaining anything but also without losing anything per car, and have a greatly increased volume of sales

- A little less gas is consumed, a few less pollutants go in the air.

Minuses:

- This money is coming from the taxes of people who may not even own cars.

I'm pretty sure all Varus' knowledge has been spoon fed to him.

Yes, you can do that. But look at the @#%^ing stats why don't you?

http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/1036/top-cash-for-clunkers-trade-ins-and-new-cars/

Quote:

"White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the average fuel economy increase so far is 9.4 mpg; a 61% increase." Based on the first 80,000 sales, "83% of the vehicles traded in have been trucks, while 60% of the vehicles purchased under the program have been cars."

Over half of the top ten vehicles being traded in are the Ford Explorer. Guess what the number 1 and 2 vehicles being purchased are? Ford Focus and Honda Civic.

The majority of people are getting vehicles with better fuel economy. Regardless of what your blind hatred makes you wish were true, the real stats show the truth.

Edited, Aug 14th 2009 8:01pm by TirithRR

Wrong! You have to have an improvement in gas mileage in order to get the voucher.

Nice try, though!

EDIT: Thanks, Cat.

I would also like to add that this thread reads as varus desperate to find something wrong with the program as he sits in his office "working" hard, and all of a sudden - aha! - he realizes what the problem was all along!!

Except it wasn't the problem.

This isn't very becoming on such a young gentleman, varus.

Edited, Aug 14th 2009 8:05pm by CBD

Someone else's quote, sorry, I didn't think to save the name:


*The range at which the program is most tightly targeted with incentives and rules. $3k trade-in for a 4 MPG minimum saving, $4.5k trade-in for a 10 MPG minimum saving between the old and new car. So commonly a "lifetime" saving of 2000 MPG per 100k of driving. With gas at $2.50, that's a saving of $5000 in fuel costs for the 100k. The CO2 emissions for that 100k would be cut almost in half, that's a very significant saving all at once on a high emitting appliance. So if many cars are changed over because of this porogram, the entire program would probably make a perceptible difference in US emissions savings.

Lastly people tend to grossly underestimate how their own and other people's health is affected by car pollution, and how many productive working days are lost out of the economy due to the same. Cancer, hormonal problems, headaches/migraines, asthma attacks... It's an "invisible" problem. Even if many "true" clunkers don't get taken out by this program, the significant cutting of car exhaust in general by almost half from these particular drivers, will be beneficial to families' health and the economy in a way that might not be appreciated. Thus will also take a bit of pressure off your medical system, too.

Edited, Aug 14th 2009 9:16pm by Aripyanfar

Well, yeah. No one's trying to be subtle about the fact that we want to improve our fuel economy.

...someone's engaging in some creative re-branding of your car.

(Escalades are Cadillacs.)

The environmental harm caused by scrapping a few million perfectly operational vehicles and using resources and energy to build new ones pretty much cancels out any benefit via gas mileage improvement. One of the rules of thumb of lowering your impact on the environment is that it's almost always better to continue using something inefficient until it breaks, rather than throwing it away and buying a new one. I'm sure someone has done the math on all that already. There may, however, be a long term sociological benefit in getting people to prefer efficient cars over their testosterone machines.

I have an 18, 15, and 13 year old cars, and outside of the fact that they're older, they're all in pretty good shape. As always, routine maintenance is the most important thing, and many car owners ignore it.

I like it. It still runs well and I don't have to worry at all about cosmetic damage. It is the epitome of, to quote Will Smith: "ship all banged up" and I wouldn't have it any other way.