Cash for Clunkers

[telemakos]

Hello All,

I spent a few hours this weekend looking at cars. I was planning on retiring my '91 F-150. It seems since its passed a quarter million miles, it's showing its age.

So, I'm in at various dealerships and realize that none of these guys know about the Cash for Clunkers proposal in Congress. It could just be that they didn't want to be the person to tell me to not buy a car, but I think they just didn't know and that got me to thinking about y'all here.

Don't buy a new vehicle until Congress says either yea or nay to this idea.

Here's the way it'll work if it passes.

I take my F-150 and scrap it (right now, I'll get $450 for it) or I take it to the dealership and "trade" it. They'll pretend to give me $600 but I'll notice later that I paid $601 for window etching...

That would be the normal scenario, but under cash for clunkers, my mileage for the F-150 is 16mpg. If I buy a car that has 26+ mpg (Let's say a 2009 Hyundai Elantra base model on sale right now for $9999), Congress will take some of my, your, your kid's tax money (actually $4,500), wire transfer it to the dealership. I now am buying a $5,500 car and the dealership has to make arrangements for my clunker to be squashed.

Whether you think this is a crock or?????, it's a program that we'll pay for regardless - cause Congress is soooooo wise - and it's about the only direct stimulus you can tap for your immediate family.

Two things, you'll have to have held title to the clunker for the past year, and it has to be running...

Read More

 

[_Adam_]

This program will actually hurt the poor. If the bill is passed, the value of clunkers will go up. The poor folks who can't afford a new car in the first place and instead have to buy that clunker for their transportation will have to pay more since the government is now competing to buy the clunker.

The only way this can help the poor is that if they have a clunker they are willing to get rid of, they could possibly sell it to someone who wants to trade it in.

Government we can believe in.

 

[eldbillbo]

i actully thought of this Idea on my own a year ago but leave it to the gooberment to F it up

i think if the US big rig companies like Chevy were to use some of that money to buy up all the older gas guzzlers pre 80 v8 and big block rigs at 1k or less each cash for running rigs maybe more for trade in to be crushed this would create a demand on new rigs with better gas milage thus keeping the gas prices down and keeping the factories open and keeping jobs

i think this should mainly apply to SUV type trucks which really are not needed for work purposes like a regular trucks and maybe some other gas guzzler trucks

this way it would have less impact on the poor and if keeps the plants from closing that means less poor to worry about impacting

and if gas prices are kept down by gas efficient cars then more people traveling for vacations spending more money on hotels camps sites and resturants and tourist traps meaning again more jobs ect

 

[_Adam_]

...if gas prices are kept down by gas efficient cars then more people traveling for vacations spending more money on hotels camps sites and resturants and tourist traps meaning again more jobs ect

Gas prices will never be kept low. Efficiency will cause prices to rise to compensate for the decline in sales volume. Not only that, but the cost of employing people increases every year. Throw on increased taxation, and in the end, despite the consumer's best intent to buy more fuel efficient vehicles, prices will increase no matter what.

We are essentially going through this same scenario with the power company. We are pushed to buy energy saver appliances and when we do, the power company has to raise rates because we are consuming less energy. Now they are implementing smart meters so they can charge more during peak demand hours. (I know that I am ignoring business consumption, but you get my point)

 

[Dan-Dee Sales Inc]

$4 billion dollars is the price tag as of this morning. No thanks

 

[davel686]

I see the clunker bill as a disaster in the making.
there are just to many Americans that can't afford a new rig or to even make a payment on a new car along with full coverage insurance.
we had a older small car that had 200,000 on it and still got around 24MPG.
but it was to small for what we needed and didn't get around in the snow around here very well and was breaking down faster then we could fix it.
last summer when the gas prices where so high we went to a good dealer down river from us and found a very nice ford Explorer for a lot less then we would have had to pay for it 6 months earlier.
the dealers couldn't hardly give them away, but where we live and due to my health problems, having a 4X4 mid size SUV was exactly what we needed.
I'm glad we got it because we had bad snow for almost a month in December and January.
we now have a rig that we can tow with, get around in the bad snow in, go up in the woods with and haul cargo in.
a small car just doesn't cut it in our lives and it never has and we can't afford to buy or own 2 rigs and keep them up.

 

[bcp]

Don't run out looking for a clunker to buy to trade in.


From:
<broken link removed>

_Older trade-in vehicles must be in drivable condition, be manufactured in model year 1984 or later and be continuously insured to the same owner for at least one year immediately prior to trade-in.

 

[ORBrit]

how many people is this really going to help?
If someone is driving a "clunker" that's worth less than $4500, the chances are they are not the kind of person who can afford to go out and buy a brand new car, even with the incentive.
Chances are there are a lot of clunker drivers out there that won't even qualify for the deal, as they probably don't even carry insurance either!

 

[toys]

i think the idea is good, but its really ripe for misuse.

what keeps an autodealership from getting people to "turn in" their cars (not working) and getting the $$$ anyway. who is going to check/verify the car is running? whos going to check the paperwork?

to me anytime our govmt comes up with ideas, there are thousands working to screw the system.

when i was in Trinidad, almost eveyone down there drove really nice/newer cars including the less wealthy. when i asked about them, the local govmt declaired that any car older then x years was to be removed. they got most of their cars from Asia iirc, and they were all used cars, but in really nice condition. I gues when the other countris found out that Trinidad required newer cars, an immediate market was made for used cars. i can see something like that working, but not $$$ for cars.

 

[alpina]

I drive a 1986 Town Car in the winter due to the turkeys out there without insurance. It does get about 18MPG on the road and has >250K on it.

In the summer, I drive the 450SL for distances, but drive my electric Gold Wing motorcycle for most of the commute. A lot of days I do not even fire up an engine any more. 15 miles per day at $0.25 per day is not too bad. Oh, in its current configuration, it has a range of just over 20 miles and a top speed of 60mph. That will change when I reconfigure it this winter. I did not get a grant, a loan or any money from the government for this. That stuff went to the bankrupt GM and Chrysler instead...

When has the government given something to someone that they haven't taken from someone else? They always attach some strings, sometimes even after the money has been given away. Private sector cannot do that, just government.

The attached picture is of my motorcycle as I had just gotten it running. The Town Car is in the background.

 

[pdxjohann]

Alpina (Marsh) that bike rocks. Tell us about it? Did you assemble the conversion? How low, at what expense, availability of component parts? Dude, that rocks

 

[alpina]

(Marshall is my son. My name is Keith ;^)

I designed and did the conversion. The difficult part was going from shaft drive to the motor since I needed a 4.5:1 reduction on my motor. It cost me about $2600 including the donor bike.

Custom parts were the 72vdc to 13.8vdc charger/converter, the monitoring system, the drive shaft tail modification and the motor mount.

If I dropped an extra several thousand into the conversion, I could get the range up to 100 miles and the speed up to about 85mph. That may happen this coming fall. Right now I did it on a budget since I did it on my own dime.

Later...

 

[slythorne]

and if gas prices are kept down by gas efficient cars then more people traveling for vacations spending more money on hotels camps sites and resturants and tourist traps meaning again more jobs ect

So you haven't heard that gas prices are on the rise once again? (going on months now) And I guess you haven't heard WHY either?? The WHY, is that the oil is being stockpiled by the foreign governments and OPEC because it was being sold too cheap! It is 1973 all over again.... except they are producing it - they are just forcing us to pay more for it. They are running low on storage facilities and may have to start capping wells temporarily because demand has not rebounded so far.

 

[pdxjohann]

Alpina, does that ferring (sp?) include a stereo boomer? Do you have tapes to crank up with vrooom sounds? :/ Seriously, I love it. From what did you take your reduction gearbox? I'm thinking of planetary gears from an old Clark floor machine. If my memory serves they are 3 planet gears solidly put together; but, they seem to be about 10:1 as a guess.

What was this thread about again? Oh yeah - gas prices.....screw Enron.

 

[alpina]

I have been toying with the idea of a PA speaker with some sort of Harley sounds just to irritate people ;^)

I just did a #40chain / sprocket reduction between the motor and the drive shaft - went to www.surpluscenter.com and picked up the parts there pretty cheap. Chain is way more efficient than belt drives.

Yeah, gas is going to whack us all soon. Some of it is the supply and demand, some of the problems will be due to inflation. You can't just print money with no backing. It dilutes the value of the money, then inflation kicks in.

Crude Oil Lifting Costs will go up as the easy to get stuff is used. That is the cost per barrel to lift it up out of the ground.