skidmark

Well I am glad I stirred the pot with this thread. I would take advantage of this program if I was in the car market and I could get what I wanted. However, there is a general agreement this program is not going to help the enviorment. And most certainly not help the economy by subsidizing cars.

11Fan

$2 Billion Boost

House Approves $2 Billion Boost for 'Cash for Clunkers' Program - Political News - FOXNews.com

USMCFLYR

No slight taken.
I have no problem taking the tax incentive or the gov't incentive - whatever you want to call it. Something that the gov't finally does that help me out for $1,000! I'm all for it. As for it helping the environment, guess that will be a matter of opinion - especially on the big scale. I was in the market for a new car within 6 months probably. I certainly wouldn't have looked at the Subaru before. Even the Honda CRV and Toyota RAV4 I was looking at didn't meet the criteria and they didn't run as clean; so in my little part of the world - I got a car that had a 9 and 7 ratings for the environmental impact and that 170 hp V-4 uses less gas and the emissions are darn near nothing.
Works for me.....and as long as the dealers get their promised rebates from the gov't then I imagine it is helping them move inventory.
Btw - the cancelling after one week part; it is my understanding that the program has been a much greater success than they would have ever thought and, agreed, no one saw a BILLION dollars being used up in a weeks time. I hemmed and hawed thinking that I had weeks or months to make a decision.

USMCFLYR

11Fan

o' mice an' men. Gang aft a-gley,

".....the government Web site where dealers are supposed to register their deals has been crashing, and the dealers haven’t been able to plug in their information.

Dealers Race to Get Their Clunkers Crushed - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com

Looks like your timing was good USMCFLYR. Hope your Dealer can pull it off. I'm about another year and a half from replacing my primary vehicle so this will be all over by that time I would suspect.

DYNASTY HVY

Might be a good idea to check and see what kind of score a car gets after going through a crash test .
Not much sense in going GREEN if one ends up going RED after a car crash.



Ally

USMCFLYR

All the cars I looked at had top notch safety ratings. Maybe it is just something about that type of vehicle, and of course the dealers emphasized all of the safety features when praising their particular vehicles. Btw - the other vehicles I looked at were the Honda CRV, Toyota RAV4, Hyundai Santa Fe and recently I sw commercials for the Chevy Equinox that caught my attention (though I didn't consider it).

USMCFLYR

USMCFLYR

Me too. I felt they treated me pretty well and bargined with good faith (as much as a car dealer can ). I certainly do hope that they will get their money from the gov't. I'm going to miss not having that car payment though! I did hear yesterday that the gov't held meetings to talk about further funding the program and suggested that if people were still interested this weekend that they should expect the program would still be in effect. Of course the real concern is coming from the dealers, so I guess we'll see how confident THEY are about the validity of the program over the weekend.

USMCFLYR

DYNASTY HVY

Fred wants to buy another car and is trying to decide what to buy .
BTW Why are we using taxpayer's money for people to buy foreign named cars when we schould be buying American and helping them pay off the money that they owe us TAXPAYERS ?

Ally

USMCFLYR

I can't just go by the label on the car anymore. There are many of the "foreign" cars that are built right here in the good ol' US of A It was BIG news when BWM built a brand new fancy car plant near Spartanburg, SC. Buying that GERMAN car provided alot of AMERICAN jobs in a fairly depressed part of the state/country. Finally...maybe this will help shake the American car makers awake and they will finally make cars that can compete on all levels with other car makers. This is the first "foreign" can I've ever bought, so we'll see how I like it. As I stated earlier - this car has some big shoes to fill before I'll praise it like I did my Mustang!

USMCFLYR

unemployedagain

Yesterday when I was reviewing the AP news briefs; I read about an individual who was a graduate student, who was unemployed that went and used this program. She "admitted that she could not afford the car, yet she felt it was such a good deal".

There are so many problems with this senerio. First, has there been any screening on the ability for a car buyer to actually afford the car payments going forward? What happens when those cars are reposesed and now the overall value of the cars are in decline? And what about the "toxic" loans that had been created that had been pushed into default due to the inability to pay?

Please advise if there was some sort of qualifying restriction on this program. I just don't see the car dealerships having the responsible where with all to institute a program and maintain the standards. This program is and has been about the cashflow of the car dealerships. Placing some sort of enviromental impact savings is total BS. Where is the carbon footprint data on how much is created when a automobile is produced vs. maintaining that same older car over a certain period of time. I have felt a car should last so long, much longer than what I have witnessed for the price that is being charged.

Giving a rebate, or whatever it is called for persons to buy a car using tax dollars is not responsible. Your kids, grandkids and their grandkids are going to be paying for this.

This was never the consumer's problem, it was the car companies. This will create more problems, perhaps this program solved the inventory problems of the car companies in the short term. But how many cars will be bought once this program has ended? They say it was a success; I believe anything that had been exhausted in a week has some serious deficencies and they should have looked at this rather than extended another 2 billion to continue.



Maybe some more beers need to be consumed ??