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Comments
No. The combined mileage is 20. In order to qualify for the program it would have to be 18 or less. Unfortunately your car may be a worn-out piece of junk, like most of the cars I've owned, but it's not legally defined as a "clunker."
I think of C4C as a somewhat gross filter--it'll work for 90% of situations, and that's good enough.
That would be similar to a Gun-Buyback program that some cities have run. Get the product off the street. I guess if the C4C program really wanted to be envionmentally friendly it would do that, and not encourage buying a new vehicle. The program would simply encourage a smaller driving public. But minimal though it is, the program is trying to stimulate the economy, which at $1B is not going to be noticed, especially with much of the money going to foreign manufacturers and workers. Maybe C4C should be rewritten so that you needed to purchase a Ford, Chrysler or GM product made in the USA (not Mexico, Canada, Korea ...)?
Did I ask the government to pay me $4500?
They came up with the program with intend to boost sales of "green" cars and get rid of the dangerous junk that are currently on the road and pollute the air.. They probably spent a lot of $$$ (yours and mine) to come up with this...
And what ever those geniuses came up with is a total garbage - not because I can not cash in (again I never asked them) it is because the purpose of this program will not be achieved.
If this is its real purpose, I think it will work well. If people are expecting it to do more than that (rescue the Detroit 3, make more than a small dent in "carbon footprint," bail out the poor, etc.) then they are expecting more than this program was designed to do. It's not a "chicken in every pot" (or "Prius in every garage") giveaway, and shouldn't be presented as such.
Then they could pay me to take my 31 mpg '99 Civic off the road and replace it with a new 14 mpg Explorer. Why should they do that?
That would help a US automaker get rid of a gas guzzler taking up room on the lot. :shades:
it is because you Civic have lower emission standards than 2009 Explorer. Think of this as second hand smokers.
this program, should be about getting cars with better emission systems, boosting sales of the new cars and getting old dangerous junk off the road even if it has good mpg - I'm sure 1986 Yugo has an excellent mpg, but are you sure everything else is working on this car as it supposed to be and its catalytic converter is in good shape?
The mileage is your problem - you have money to spend - buy a monster truck! as long as it a "green" monster truck - I do not have problems with that.
Helping dealers sell 14 mpg gas guzzlers is an amusing idea, but politically not feasible. Besides, there will always be buyers for trucks that can haul heavy loads and do heavy work. These are honorable vehicles in their own right. It's how they are USED that becomes ridiculous, when an F-350 is used as a commuter vehicle. Maybe C4C will encourage some people to get sensible about what they drive.
Vern C.
Gas mileage and air pollution are two different things. They could be related, but not necessarily. If you want to use F-350 as commuter vehicle it is fine! You have money to burn (literally) - it is your personal preference. as long as it does not pollute the air!
Perhaps I am wrong, and too judgmental, but I would think that someone using an F-350 to commute to work is probably not all that thoughtful about the "big picture".
It's easier to feel pain at the gas pump then to know if the air around you is clean or not.
MPG is a concept readily graspable by just about everyone. The "air quality index" or "energy import percentages" is rather conceptual for most of us.
For this group they wanted to get the worst actors off the road. If your vehicle has deteriorated that much with an orignal sticker value of 20 mpg think how bad a truck or SUV of the same age which originally had a combined rating of 16 mpg???
Of course it will work. If you think your Sable is bad just think how bad all the trucks and SUVs sold since 1984 are. Do you realize that there have been 50 million of these vehicles sold over that period? That's 50 million potential bad actors which could be traded - all of which are worse than your Sable. Many of them were worse than your Sable from the day that they were purchased.
Sorry your rant is way off base....
Grinning from ear to ear...some of this stuff continues to crack me up!!!
The C4C "Poster Child"...kinda has a nice ring to it.
PS Was actually thinking about waxing ol' Bessie before strollin' into the dealership sometime this summer. Tires alone are worth more than she is right now so according to Jeff Foxworthy (You KNOW you're a redneck if...), well, ya'll get the point. Con't.
if they really want to get old heaps off the road they should drop that needing to have the car a year provision. then the guy in the paper with his $800 89 Olds would make sense. He'd be happy and whoever bought it would be happy and of course the dealer with the free $3,500 in the deal would be happy.
Think of all the trees we could have planted in the rain forest with the money GM and Chrsyler have lost just in the last decade!
I don't just hate the idea because I don't have a car that qualifies, I hate the idea because it rewards the stupid and foolish, and punishes the smart and prudent.
Sort of like everything Bush set into motion during his Presidency.
Obama needs to back off and retreat from these inane ideas. Admit you were wrong and stop the madness.
I've read that GM and Chrysler will no longer be liable for prior lawsuits where they were found to be at fault. This is dispicable. How about for every clunker turned in, the Big 3 pay out one more claim they owe. If they hadn't wasted so much money on lawyers defending indefensible things, maybe they'd have the money to make a decent vehicle?
I think the ultimate cash for clunkers program has been our handing out money in gobs so that they can still make Sebrings.
The SUV would need to get at least 18 mpg to qualify.
lhttp://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/cars.shtml
Click on the "How much can I get?" tab.
Question -- wasn't there supposed to be some mileage requirement for the new vehicle that was greater than the one being traded in? Or did that go away from the bill?
is the money really lost? GM workers got paid, suppliers got paid, ex workers got retirement checks, workers and ex workers got health care paid for, car buyers got cars that were more costly to produce than was paid for them. Hundreds of billions of dollars changed hands each year. Tens of billions of tax money was paid from it all in the process.
A car was obtained for $2000 less than it was really worth. A worker got $2000 more pay than he earned. A hospital got $2000 more than the MRI was worth. The gov't got $500 more tax than it deserved as a result. The suppliers who can't get GM to pay them get $400 from the gov. The overpaid worker had a $2000 pool put in that the pool company made $800 profit on. The gov. got $500 more from the worker and 300 more in income tax from the pool company.
Now when GM stock falls 88%, that money vaporizes. Wall Street. that generates losses on tax returns and the gov't loses hundreds of billions in tax revenues. That is 'lost burned up money going down the tubes'.
In reality, I'm aware that the point is not to get 4 cylinder Camry's off the road but I've been beaten up pretty badly by this recession and I wouldn't mind a silver lining. I haven't read about any flexibility around the 18 mpg or less cut-off like I have around the 4 mpg improvement vs. the 10 mpg improvement.
Does anyone know if the type of driving is factored in or if a more limited reward is available for cars already getting decent mileage? Thanks
Bill S.
See:
http://www.cars.gov/
and
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/cars.shtml
The vehicle that you are trading in is required to be destroyed. Therefore, the value you negotiate with the dealer for your trade in is not likely to exceed its scrap value. The law requires the dealer to disclose to you and estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in vehicle.
My take is you can negotiate over and above the $3500 or $4500 voucher amount for your trade in. If the trade in qualifies for $4500 and the body panels etc are all very good it may have a scrap value of say $200. The dealer is required to tell you that figure and you try to get as much of it as you can. The only part that has to be destroyed is the engine. So I bring in a clean vehicle with no rust the vehicle has the engine pulled and destroyed. However the salvage yard just happens to have and engine transmission from a wrecked vehicle of the same vintage that together makes a good used vehicle.
Do I see a cottage industry rising up here? Too bad I am retired and basically lazy.
Sorry this just isn't true. It's just a bit of moaning and whining.
First the money that was given to Chrysler and GM went back into the US economy. They didn't have a bonfire and set it ablaze. It went all over the place and likely kept a multitude of businesses afloat if only for a couple of more months ( Lear Corp ). It actually kept Chrysler and GM alive to fight another day as leaner companies with much better prospects of survival.
If the two of them do survive than the balance of the investments have a good chance of being recouped when the ownership shares are sold to new investors. Overall it's been a smart investment in a time of crisis.....and I work for a competitor.
It's good for the United States on the whole.
What I can see occuring though is that owners will take everything of value out of the vehicle, but it still has to be drivable, presumably with all doors, signals and glass intact ( to be legal ), then the owner can sell the extracted parts himself if he so wishes. That sounds like good entrepreneurship.
http://www.cars.gov/files/day-one.pdf
Leaves a lot of room for interpretation...
And maybe someone could rack their brain and figure out what car or truck would actually be worth $3,500 scrap. Maybe an older Suburban retired from the Secret Service fleet that has a few extra tons of steel in it?
Actually Union wages did go up while those at the bottom were stagnant. There in lies much of the problem. The Upper middle class (UAW and the like) made great wages while those at the bottom did not keep pace. Globalization which got going strong in the 1970s took the jobs at the lower levels. Now those people in China are chewing away at the Union jobs such as the UAW. Meanwhile the local, state and Federal government kept expanding with higher and higher paying Union jobs. Today there is not many left to pay the taxes for all the over paid public servants. Don't forget the 30 million illegals eroding the bottom tier wages. They are also sucking up free services that the few of US are paying. All part of a Socialist agenda started in the 1930s.
C4C will do Nothing to help our standard of living. We are going to lose a lot of ground that will never return because of our flagrant borrowing at every level of our society.
The disclosure and haggling might be a situation if the vehicle is close to the limit for the voucher. Dealer: it's worth $3500....Buyer: I want $4000.
If the value is far below the threshhold then why would the buyer care what the scrap value is? The buyer can only get the $3500 or $4500
I could see a situation where an agreement is made between a large group whereby it will provide all its clunkers to a scrapper in exchange for one third of the June auction value ( I'd expect that the July - ??? auction values of these vehicles will be zero or close to it ). It appears that the scrapper will strip off the salable parts and crush the engine and other useless parts. Some value may come from the stripped off parts.
Maybe one could buy back their own entire vehicle, without the drive train, before it is destroyed?
...and now for something completely different...I wonder how much traffic cars.com is going to get as a result of the official site for this being cars.gov?
Now that is an idea I like. I really like my 99 Ford Ranger, EXCEPT for the gutless POC V6 FF engine and transmission. Buy back the vehicle sans engine via the salvage company and convert to electric or install a Cummins 4BT diesel engine with auto transmission. One of many things I have contemplated doing with my truck.
Every one is happy. hmmmmm
Besides, the crap traded in under C4C is not worth the trouble. Wrecking yards are already very selective about what they will even accept. The money is in late model wrecks, not 1980s Oldmobiles.
Yikes. That one does just barely squeak into the eligible category, at 18 mpg EPA combined. I'd be inclined to keep that one, unless it just won't satisfy your needs anymore.
work and it's starting to rust(lives in the state of Michigan). I figure I would need to spend a couple of grand just to fix the problems I listed or a could trade it against a Focus(4500) or Fusion S(3500) and have a more fuel efficient car that I could payoff in a couple of years and drive another 6-8 years.