Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
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Instead, you just made yourself look foolish.
It wouldn't be worth the risk.
As far as parts, they may pull the doors, tailgate, maybe the hood and the glass.
It they look under hood and see a recently replaced radiator or alternator they will probably grab those items. That sort of thing.
I think it will be an absolute windfall for these guys!
Just noticed another anomaly. Remember the 92 Chevy that gets $4500 on a new 4X4 that gets 3 MPG less than the old PU. Well a 92 Ford F150 only gets $3500 if the new PU gets 1 MPG more. If they both get the same mileage the F150 owner gets $4500.
You got to love this program.
I think that there is plenty of information on the web about the C4C program, and I think that it is pretty clear that the intent is to scrap the vehicles turned in and not resell them. I also think that this is a reasonable, measured program that will stimulate a few car sale when the industry really needs it.
I investigated it this weekend. I have a 98 Toyota 4 Runner that would qualify, but the $3500 or $4500 that I would get, would only be $500 to $1500 than what I could get on a trade in anyway, and not really worth it. Particularly when I read what would happen to the engine on my truck. I just cannot do that to my 4 Runner. It felt cruel.
A lot of people seem to rant and moan, either that the program should not exist at all, or alternately complain that it is not generous enough that everyone can get a new car. I'm sure the program is not perfect, but if it generates a few extra car sales this year, it will keep the industry going until (hopefully) a more sustained recovery next year. If they gave everyone $8000 to just go out and buy a new car, I'm sure it would steal car sales from next year.
Am I going to rant that I do not benefit from this program? No, I am just going to keep on driving my faithful 11 year old SUV, with the crayons melted into the seats, and the power antenna that doesn't go up anymore and be thankful for what I have. 'Cause it could be a lot worse.
There could be some screaming from dealers that took the plunge and the money may be all gone before their vouchers get processed.
I would imagine that it would increase the volume of people visiting dealerships, but a lot of people may have a clunker but just cannot buy a new car at this point. Others will do the math and realize that they are only going to get a modest premium over their trade in value and not bother.
But it is not my field. I only reluctantly venture into a dealership every 5-6 years...then don't return until I absolutely have to...
Another dealer was echoing what some here have hinted: that all the money currently authorized for the program could be gone in 10-14 days. I imagine dealers will still be glad of the temporary bump in sales.
At every dealer they interviewed, they filmed the lot where C4C trade-ins were being stored, and they were all almost without exception American-brand SUVs. All the dealers interviewed, except one Chrysler dealer, were selling Japanese brands.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Questions like (my paraphrase), "Were it not for the CARS program incentive you are receiving with this transaction, would you have purchased a new car today?" Or "In the last year, how many miles would you say you drove your CARS trade-in vehicle?". It was a rather interesting set of questions that actually made me feel like Big Brother was collecting data for a future legislative bill. Thoughts anyone?
Joe
C4C would steal car sales anyway. Smart people going to wait 2-3 years and buy used cars.
Saw another news piece this morning on Piercey Toyota in San Jose, which has already done 37 C4C sales since Friday! I had my doubts this program would do much what with all its conditions and whatnot, but it appears to be a raging success.
And so many of the trade-ins are Ford Explorers, maybe it will lift the resale values for Explorer owners who hang on to their trucks! :-P
I am amused that they are giving C4C buyers that little questionnaire - I guess they want some evidence the bill had its intended effect.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
However this program was written by the auto industry for its own purposes. It will reach its intended goal ... as planned. In that regard it can only be considered a perfect success.
Now you can rest easy that 'your' tax dollars are not supporting another person's auto purchases. You can stop ranting at any time now.
You ( buyers ) should salvage as much as possible before dropping it off.
The dealers can do the same if they so choose. Most won't because that would simply clutter up pretty sales spaces with loose junk.
The junkyards will benefit the most IMO. But they do have to crush the engine and they do have to do the labor to disassemble the vehicle, but so what.
I'm not sure how clapped out old cars suddenly are achieving sainthood in some people's eyes. Are they like those greasy meatballs they serve in business banquets? Nobody wants to even touch one until someone else grabs for them?
If used car prices go up, it's logical, because the bad ones would have been culled already, so only the ones REALLY worth $4500 will be left. Maybe we'll even get relief from having to pour through all that Craigslist junk.
One could argue that some people need access to $1500 used cars, but in the end I think they end up spending $4500 just to keep them running anyhow--but it's spread out over time. They don't have to come up with all the repair costs all at once, as they would with a $4500 "better" car.
I'd like to see some kind of "micro-loan" program for hard working people who need to buy a good used car.
Yesterday, I drove a decent 1994 Lexus to our Clunker Lot. It had 140,000 miles buit the engine had been replaced at some point (sludge). The A/C was working nicely in our 97 degree heat. The car ran great!
It needed a good clean up but It would have served someone well for years.
I don't consider a car having gone 140,000 useful miles as having been wasted, do you, I mean really?. One doesn't have to drive a car right into the dirt to claim that they got their money's worth, and that the car "did its job".
Besides--- Those salvage parts will keep other better cars up and running.
Too bad about the engine, though, if in fact the owner's claim were true.
In the past, I would have agreed with you when you say a car's life is about over around 175,000 miles.
It just seems that I have seen so many cars in the past few years that are running well WITHOUT having had major work done with 200,000 miles and more.
I have seen several Hondas with over 300K that have had only scheduled services done. these cars can look and run fine. This would have been unheard of not that many years ago.
I know a guy wha has a Chevy pickup that has (last time I asked) 477,000 miles on it. It has never had a valve cover off! Two transmission rebuilds and ready for it's third.
In the case of that Lexus, I just think it had a lot of life left but who knows?
Also "high mileage" is no indication that the car is in any way safe or reliable...it's just "alive".
One could keep a Yugo running for 1,000,000 miles after all.
One thing that will kill all cars is metal fatigue. I knew a guy who had a 700K-mile 1970 Chevrolet Impala that was finished when the frame snapped from metal fatigue.
where to stick C4CI wasn't interested. The "intentionally grenade the motor" directive was the last straw as far as I was concerned. No way will I take part.I think he has the Crown Vic up to around 150,000 miles now, and it's still running well...although he did have the intake manifold or something like that fail earlier this year.
Those old Panther bodies may be getting long in the tooth, but they're a good, sturdy car. Maybe not "reliable" in a Honda/Toyota-esque sort of way, but they have a sort of rugged durability that few cars today can match.
I
And how is that supposed to make anyone feel better about this bill???
The Detroit Auto Industry hasn't done a single smart thing in decades, except for maybe asking the government to bail them out, which was preposterous, but somehow they got it to happen.
This bill doesn't change the fact that everything Detroit decides to do is a bad idea. The streak is alive and well.
Because it had a slow leak in it, dating back to 2007. It slowly started getting weaker and weaker that summer, and by, say, late August, was pretty much just moving hot air around. In the fall, I had my mechanic look at it. He couldn't find a leak, so he just charged it back up, and it was fine, lasting that winter, and a good portion of the summer of 2008. However, towards the end of the summer, and into fall, it started getting weak again. I hoped I could hold off until the following spring, but then the compressor seized up in February 2009. It had been giving me warning signs for some time though, which I chose to ignore. It's not like it blew ice cold one day, and then blew up the next!
And yeah, it uses R134, and not the old R12. And just in case it still has a slow leak somewhere, I make sure to use the a/c regularly, so I can keep track of whether or not it seems to be losing its ability to cool. And if it seems to start getting weaker, it's going back to the mechanic right away! I'd rather not repeat my $1300 mistake. :sick:
A lot of people really cut back on maintence as their cars age. They figure the car isn't going to last much longer and they treat it accordingly. Theys tart skimping on oil changes, don't change the fluids and spend as little as possible figuring it isn't worth it. They figure they won't keep it much longer so why maintain it?
The guy I know with the 477,000 mile Chevy truck used to own a machine shop and he has seen a lot of gunked up engines. He maintains that truck like he did when it was new.
" Come to kindly terms with thy [non-permissible content removed] for it bears you"
My 1965 Buick Riviera would throw snowballs at you. The newer cars don't do this.
And to think, we used to cool down choke housings with R-12!
Shame on us but we didn't know!
What about personal income tax? Sales tax? Property tax? Business don't pay for everything, the goverment makes money off of people too.
Some things on a car will break due to miles, and others due to age, and of course, maintenance plays a big role here. But, in the case of my Mom & stepdad, that 130 miles involves starting the car twice...once in the morning, once in the evening. After it warms up, where cars get the biggest wear, each additional mile is a cake walk. And since it's mostly highway, they're not hitting the brakes that often, varying engine speed too much, not having to stomp on it to merge onto the highway, etc.
Now, contrast that to when I used to deliver pizzas, and on a busy night, could rack up 200 miles on the car. That's 200 miles of stop-and-go driving, where I probably turned the car on and off 20-30 times (I'd often leave it running while at the customer's house, otherwise we'd be talking more like 50-60 times). Not to mention hopping in and out of the car 50-60 times, slamming the door, constant acceleration/deceleration, getting back to the store and shutting the car off, only to turn it back on again in 5 minutes.
All miles are not created equal, and needless to say, a mile under my watch was much more brutal than a mile under my Mom & stepdad's!
And while those pizza delivery days are behind me, nowadays my commute to work is a whopping 3.5 miles. In the winter, that's not even enough time for the car to warm up! I actually take a back road to work that stretched it to something like 4.8 miles, and sometimes, when the weather's nice, and I'm driving one of my old cars that hasn't been run in awhile, I'll take a longer route that puts me at 7-10 miles...depending on how badly I want to get to work that day. :P
It doesn't matter all that much if you or others feel good or bad about it. It serves the purposes of those that wrote it. That's the way our government is run.
Don't blame Detroit all that much. They and their in-house politico's were the ones to front the bill simply because they have the power to do so. It was also Torrance and all the local small businesses called dealerships which will benefit even more by the program.
On top of that the ones that really hold the power, the Pentagon and the Intelligence agencies of the Executive Branch, got their way most of all. Rant all you want. You're screaming for the wind to stop.
bill, H.R 2743, the Automobile Dealer Economic Rights Restoration Act of 2009,
I think someone in the House is unclear on the concept.
Don't worry the money to fund this program is not coming from your tax payments to the IRS. Your money comes back to you in the form of national defense. My money come back to me in the attempt to put a man on Mars. GM's and Ford's and Nissan's and Honda's and Toyota's future tax payments are coming back to them in the form of increased business this year when they really need it.
Um, so how did the bill become law? Did elves come and sign Obama's signature to it while he was sleeping or something? To pretend that Obama had nothing to do with the law is a bit much. It's his law. He could have vetoed it. He didn't.
I would much rather buy a car with 100,000 miles that was used for long freeway commutes than a 40,000 mile pizza deliver car.
I love it when people trading in a high mileage car tell me, " Those are ALL freeway miles so it shouldn't matter".
Well, it does mattter and I'm sure at least SOME of those miles were on surface streets in stop and go traffic.
I was recently in a airport Shuttle Express van and the driver was having a conversation with another rider. He said the one we were riding in had 375,000 miles and it was one of the newer ones. He said they maintain them very well but rarely have any kind of engine trouble. He said they had one with over 700,000 miles when it got wrecked. These are Fords and they run non stop close to 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Since these huge sectors have huge voices politicians listen. Welcome to the United States of Business.