Cash For Clunkers - This is what happens.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Eric.
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Duntov GT is a bunch of 80s GM parts cobbled together in the shape of the mid-60s Corvette Grand Sport racers.


This list doesn't mean much. As said in the link, I'd be amazed if even half of those vehicles weren't dealers playing the system, and most of those cars flat out do not qualify.
I'm guessing the lone GNX was just a Regal T-Type gussied up. A honest-to-god GNX isn't a car you can sell used under the radar, because they were legendary in the 80s. You would have to have a truly EPIC FAIL DB7 for the dealer to not simply hand you a stack of cash, and I similarly find it hard to believe that a car worth nearly $300,000 about ten years ago is only worth $4500 now.
Though:
(17) Chrysler Conquest
(15) Isuzu Vehicross
...including (123) SVX
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:(


Edit: It appears that these were just the cars that people tried to turn in. I'm assuming the dealers probably gave the people of many of them $4500 in no-strings-attached cash and laughed themselves to the bank instead of taking the government money.
 
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I know I doubt half of those were destroyed. I just thought it was intersting. As for the Aston that was oddest of the bunch, I don't understand that at all. But then again some people don't fully understand the value of a car when they bought it just to buy it.
 
LOOK EVERYONE! Cash for Clunkers worked!

autosales1.jpg


... for like two weeks.
 
What do we have, like another two weeks before all the guys brought in to meet the extra demand at the plants get laid off...again?
 
the sad thing is that this is all due to people, for years on end, were buying things they couldn't afford.
 
Jim Prower
the sad thing is that this is all due to people, for years on end, were buying things they couldn't afford.
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Yup,so the government said "hey, here is $4500 dollars to buy a new car you can't afford".:indiff:
 
Didn't people get $4500 on top of the trade in value? If that is the case why wouldn't anyone have done it if they were planning on trading there car in anyways?

JCE
The owner is an absolute IDIOT for doing this. Despite Joey's malcontent, GTA's are not just any old Firebird and finding one in such good condition as I see there is very difficult. A GTA is going to be (and already is probably) a collector's item and or a classic car. They obviously cared nothing for the car and its rarity. It is going to be childish of me but I hope the owner crashes his or her new car and totals it.
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It's their car so they should be able to do what they want with it.
 
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TVC
Didn't people get $4500 on top of the trade in value? If that is the case why wouldn't anyone have done it if they were planning on trading there car in anyways?
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Nope, it was aimed to get older cars off of the road by offering more than the trade in value. Basically the $4500 took place of the trade in value.
 
Justin
Nope, it was aimed to get older cars off of the road by offering more than the trade in value. Basically the $4500 took place of the trade in value.
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Yeah that is what I thought at first but then later I was told that people get that on top of the trade in value. Thank you. It makes me wonder why some people even used it to trade there cars in. a lot of the cars on the list NISM0_SKYLINE posted have a higher trade in value than $4500. I think I remember hearing that some dealerships were not accepting trade-ins unless you were doing Cash for Clunkers at the time which might explain the reason but I still do not see why they would not wait or sell it somewhere else? Even some of the cars that were traded in frequently for the program are worth more than $4500 if sold somewhere else and possibly if people waited to trade them in.
 
TVC
higher trade in value than $4500.
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Worth more than $4,500? Maybe, but not with a trade in value of more than $4,500. For this to work, the car has to be worth a good 7 grand at least, because after the trade in, it needs to go through the dealership and get fixed, air filters, wipers, things like that, and then cleaned up, scratches repaired, dents repaired, ect. They also have to pay someone to do all this, which I should mention, is not simply the 20 bucks an hour it costs to pay the person working on it, since the service department has to make money off this too, so they're marking up the prices for parts, and they're charging the dealership $40-60 an hour for labor, and then they still need to be able to make a $2-3,000 profit.

This is why you see cars that "could" be sold for 7-8k get traded in through the cash for clunkers program.

A car worth 5k would only bring about 2k maximum in a trade in.
 
Perfect Balance
Worth more than $4,500? Maybe, but not with a trade in value of more than $4,500. For this to work, the car has to be worth a good 7 grand at least, because after the trade in, it needs to go through the dealership and get fixed, air filters, wipers, things like that, and then cleaned up, scratches repaired, dents repaired, ect. They also have to pay someone to do all this, which I should mention, is not simply the 20 bucks an hour it costs to pay the person working on it, since the service department has to make money off this too, so they're marking up the prices for parts, and they're charging the dealership $40-60 an hour for labor, and then they still need to be able to make a $2-3,000 profit.

This is why you see cars that "could" be sold for 7-8k get traded in through the cash for clunkers program.

A car worth 5k would only bring about 2k maximum in a trade in.
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Someone finally gets it: Making a car "like-new", with everything operating properly, and looking good, is a very expensive proposition.

Was I the only one who saw a rusted Typhoon? With slight damage? People will only pay top-dollar for a top-dollar car, not some car that's not well kept up. Never mind its likely only a select group of buyers that are really interested.

Did it run? Have a repair quote of over $5000? Of course you don't know, but motivation has to come from somewhere...

My old Lexus qualified for the program, but most GS's from that era are in sketchy shape. The enormity of Mercedes-Benzes doesn't shock me, they never had great fuel economy, and likely mostly poorly running examples were sent to their doom due to high maintenance costs and unforeseen expenses that the average second/third/fourth owner wasn't expecting.
 
Pupik
Did it run? Have a repair quote of over $5000? Of course you don't know, but motivation has to come from somewhere...
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Ah, caveat. To be turned in to the C4C program, the car had to run and move itsself before it was scrapped, even if barely. This way, scrap dealers wouldn't be getting their C4C credit simply by bringing a non-running vehicle someone turned over to them.

Otherwise, I see where you're coming from.
 
Perfect Balance
Worth more than $4,500? Maybe, but not with a trade in value of more than $4,500. For this to work, the car has to be worth a good 7 grand at least, because after the trade in, it needs to go through the dealership and get fixed, air filters, wipers, things like that, and then cleaned up, scratches repaired, dents repaired, ect. They also have to pay someone to do all this, which I should mention, is not simply the 20 bucks an hour it costs to pay the person working on it, since the service department has to make money off this too, so they're marking up the prices for parts, and they're charging the dealership $40-60 an hour for labor, and then they still need to be able to make a $2-3,000 profit.

This is why you see cars that "could" be sold for 7-8k get traded in through the cash for clunkers program.

A car worth 5k would only bring about 2k maximum in a trade in.
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Yes you are right but I think cars like a DB7 or 2006 A4 will probably going to get more than $4500 trade in a long with some other cars more commonly traded in for the program. For the most part you are right though. Especially since most of the cars traded in were American.
 
FoolKiller
What do we have, like another two weeks before all the guys brought in to meet the extra demand at the plants get laid off...again?
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My place made a permanent 2nd shift, hired more people, and split us between the shifts to make up for the demand. Recently we went beyond that, and now myself and two other people are on third shift. This is meant to last a total of three weeks, including the rest of this one and the next. After that, who knows. These people we hired for a month will likely get laid off, third shift will be shut, and the rest of us will be moved back to a more normal schedule.

So yeah, I'd say here within a month layoffs in the automotive production sector are going to rocket up. Again. Hopefully less drastically now that GM and Chrysler are seeking stable production.
 
Leading up to C4C, a lot of plants had been idled indefinately as inventory was sitting on the lots with no hopes of moving. My understanding had been that GM, Ford and Chrysler essentially allowed for their inventory to dwindle almost entirely to zero in order to re gain some level of stable production. Of course, the bad part of all of this is that either A) Customers don't want to wait for a new vehicle due to high demand, but low production or B) They ramp up production so quick that they (again) make more vehicles than they can sell.

I know that at least for GM, they have a knack for not finding equilibrium in demand and supply with their vehicles, which ends up hurting them in the long run. If they were smart, they'd keep the outflow of the Camaro, Equinox and LaCrosse on a trickle to keep people waiting. To keep those with jobs on the steady line of employment.

Still, the interesting note from the consumer spending survey released today was that if we didn't count the losses (overall) in sales from C4C from August to September, spending is going back up. A good sign for those of us in retail, but still hard to know how that will effect durable good sales (like autos, homes) in the near-future.
 
YSSMAN
but still hard to know how that will effect durable good sales (like autos, homes) in the near-future.
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I can tell you that eventually commercial activity in general will come to a crashing halt when this whole inflation thing starts blowing up like a hot air balloon. Wanna get that new HDTV for your room? Better do it before it costs more than you make in a month.
 
C'mon. Any HDTV worth getting costs more than I make in a month.

*sigh*

I miss being a manager.
 
Well, apparently when they expanded the CFC program they forgot to expand the time allotted for the scrap yards to get rid of them.:dunce: There is a scrap yard here that I guess got a majority of the cars and still has to get rid of a crap load before the deadline.

For every cars they don't scrap they get a $15,000 fine by the way.👎

Hopefully they think these types of things over before they start Cash For Clunkers 2: The Appliance Wars.

Edit: Let me know if you like the name.
 

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