Cash for Clunkers
Anyone use the new “Cash for Clunkers” incentive and bought a new car? For those of you that didn’t pay attnetion to this new program, I’ll give you a brief synopsis of who qualifies and what it is. If you have a vehicle that is newer than 1984, must get 18 miles per gallon or less combined highway/city, driveable, insured, and licensed for at least 1 year. The car must have the correct fuel efficiency requirements and the MSRP must be less than $45,000. It must be a new vehicle. How much can you get? Well, that depends upon the car. You can get $3500 for new SUVS, pickup trucks, minivans, and cars that get more than 2 miles per gallon or 4 miles per gallon (cars.) You can get $4500 for getting at least 5 mpg more for the new trucks, SUVs, and minivans, and for cars you get the $4500 if the new one gets more than 10 mpg than the trade-in. Here’s the kicker though. You can’t get the rebate plus the trade-in. In many cases, the trade-in value will be better than the rebate and therefore the Cash for Clunkers is worthless.
The good news is that during the first weekend of the Cash for Clunkers program, dealerships around the country felt good about sales. They think that this incentive will definitely boost sales for them, but unfortunately the program ends October 31, 2009, so it could be short-lived. I like the idea of the Cash for Clunkers program, but you still need quite a bit of money to buy the new vehicle. That’s the problem. Yes, it will help get rid of the gas guzzlers and boost the economy, but the customer still needs money to buy the new vehicle, and there in lies a problem for some, actually a lot these days with the unemployment rate. I guess we’ll see how the program does. We can reevaluate in November.