Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

[cjforumadmin]

http://www.bangshift.com/blog/Cash-For-Clunkers-Ready-or-Not-It-s-Here.html

[studemax]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

I'd like to take advantage of this to trade off my tired old 1992 Ranger - but no 4 bangers are on the approved list.
(and it gets 22MPG - too high)

[hazegreen66]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

The analyst quoted in the WSJ makes a good point. The beneficiaries are folks who were going to buy a new car/truck anyway and it just moves the purchase in time. That pokes holes in the argument that the net result is just more profit for car manufacturers without an appreciable improvement in environmental quality. Will those customers get fleeced more or less because they are voucher eligible? Probably not -- they were going to get fleeced anyway .

Regarding 25 years being a temporary target -- you betcha! The California ARB has announced it's expanding its buyback program to include cars built before 1976, which was never contemplated at the program's inception.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

hmmm.. tempting - I could get a Solstice turbo for 18k.... however, next winter would suck ...... badly (trade my hummer and suburban off)

[38P]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

Cash for clunkers is welfare, plain and simple.

It's borrowing from the Chinese and the printing press to give more laundered bailout cash to the big automakers (more than half of it will be blown on FWD Asian imports). Our kids and grandkids will have to pay for it.

Despite SEMA's efforts, Cash For Clunkers will lead to the destruction of many V8s built after 1984 that could have been used for hot rodding projects, grassroots racing, spare parts, entry-level transportation, or restoration.

Basic economics teaches that as supplies decrease, prices will increase. Cash for Clunkers will drive up prices on the used and core engines and spare parts that much of grassroots motorsports and hot rodding rely on. And as fewer V8s are built, sales volumes for aftermarket parts will take a hit. Lower volumes tend to cause higher prices to cover overhead and marketing costs.

There will also be scores of used car dealers, auto mechanics, and performance shops that will lose business because Cash for Clunkers cuts the supply of useable V8s.

Sure, it won't affect the minority of "Gold Card" catalog 'rodders who do builds with all-new crate engines. But it will hurt the low-buck "JY" rodders and entry-level rodders. Big blocks and some "Brand X" mills are already getting scarce and pricey in parts of the country. Now there's a huge, federally-funded target painted on affordable V8s built after '84. There is no way Cash for Clunkers is good for hot rodding and other grassroots motorsports in the long term.

On principle, no believer in free markets and no hot rodder or grassroots racer ought to participate in the Cash for Clunkers program.

Be certain that the next round (and like all welfare give-a-ways, there WILL be a next round, just like with CARB's program) will target V8s older than 1984.

On the other hand, if you're just looking for another unearned handout . . . .

[Scott Liggett]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

So far it's been a big bust. Not helping new car sales in the least.

[milner351]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

My mother in law is saying goodbye to her '89 fleetwood in favor of a new escape.

anybody need any parts off an '89 land bardge?

I'm going to pull the good tires off it and put on some maypops.
I already took the horns off and put them on the pontoon.
Wire hubcabs, hood ornament...

[BluLightning]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

I wonder if our daughters 02 Exploder would have qualified? ???

[38P]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

PREDICTION: In twenty to twenty-five years, when new V8s will be virtually extinct (except in a few hyper-expensive imports) and FWD electric-golf-cart-cars will rule the streets under government sanction, SOME FOLKS (not mentioning any names here) will be kicking themselves for vandalizing and trashing those irreplaceable '80s "land barges" just to get a Cash for Clunkers welfare voucher.

[This is not a new thought -- Everytime I see a "batmobile" winged '59 Impala bring big money at an auction, I often think about the dumb kid I once saw torch up a pristine '59 during the '70s gas crisis merely because the wild '50s body was out-of-style, it was a "boat," and he thought it would make a good, "strip down" off-road buggy. It didn't (remember the X-Frame). And in the years since, that "land barge" has increased in value by a factor of about 50. What a dope!]

Circumvention tip: The regulations aren't due out until next week, but it seems that as long as the car has been insured and registered for a year, can move under its own power, and the VIN code puts it on the "crusher list", the myopic, greed-soaked, selfish owner will qualify for a welfare voucher from our broke Uncle Sam.

Thus, I suspect that a nearly completely stripped vehicle (e.g. no interior, no fenders, no doors, no bumpers) with a near-dead junkyard engine swapped in could -- in theory-- qualify. (Check the regs when they come out to be sure)

Thus, an enterprising welfare beggar possibly could mostly part out the crusher victim, swap out a good V8 for a barely running 'plant of some sort (who knows yet whether it even has to be a V8), and trade in the "Caddy hack" hull (with VIN numbers intact, of course) for a voucher.

Of course, the tragedy is that plenty of serviceable V8s and interesting future collectibles will be destroyed just so their selfish owners can get a government handout to buy some forgettable, look-a-like Korean or Japanese FWD "appliance." (And yes, most new "crossovers" are soulless "appliances")

[Freiburger]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

So far it's been a big bust. Not helping new car sales in the least.

Keep in mind two things: 1) the program has not started yet, 2) It's not REALLY about stimulating car sales, it's about getting old cars off the road. Not I did not say, "it's about the environment." They SAY it's for a clean Earth, but it really has nothing to do with that, either.

[Scott Liggett]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

So far it's been a big bust. Not helping new car sales in the least.

Keep in mind two things: 1) the program has not started yet, 2) It's not REALLY about stimulating car sales, it's about getting old cars off the road. Not I did not say, "it's about the environment." They SAY it's for a clean Earth, but it really has nothing to do with that, either.

I heard on the business report the money is all ready to go. It ends in November, or when the money runs out.

[Brian Lohnes]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

When the money runs out?

They're already kicking the idea around of throwing another couple billion at it. This thing will not be over in November.

[SpiderGearsMan]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

since the clean air act of 1970 was a fraud ,,,,,,
it obviously didn't 'work '......or did it ? well the critters in DC now own 61% of GM , gave chrysler away to the pizza guy

[trukluvr]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

I thought you had to have money before you could throw it. Oh, that's right, Uncle Sam just "makes" more money when they run out of it.

[38P]

Re: Cash For Clunkers: Ready or Not It's Here

But the regs haven't been finalized yet.

The dealers who are promoting "Cash for Clunkers" deals already are taking the chance that they will end up having to "eat" that clunker if it proves ineligible.

Certainly, the "death row" list is already out and the general parameters of the plan are set, but the details won't be done for a few days.

Freiburger is also absolutely right. This is about getting vulnerable vintage vehicles built after 1983 off the road (and about creating a new entitlement that can be expanded "CARB-style" to earlier vintage vehicles).

On the Truth With Speedzzter blog, I wrote during the Cash For Clunkers debate:

In 1850, there were an estimated 20 million buffalo roaming the Great Plains of North America.

In 1866, General Philip H. Sheridan assumed command of the U.S. Army in the frontier American West. Indigenous, nomadic native American tribes were viewed as the largest obstacle to settling the frontier. General Sheridan proposed exterminating the herds of buffalo that support the Indians' way of life. "Kill the buffalo and you kill the Indians."

Over the next twenty years, Sheridan's suggestion was de facto U.S. Policy. By 1889, only 541 buffalo could be located.

[The] Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save bill (CARS Act), better known under the deceptive moniker "Cash For Clunkers" is another misguided "buffalo hunt."

Only this time, the liberal greeniacs intend to "Kill the old cars" in order to "kill our automotive culture."

[Cash for Clunkers supporters] point to the "success" of "Cash For Clunkers"in Germany.

But the German "Cash For Clunkers" programs is sweeping up a whole generation of serviceable collector and sporting cars in its dragnet.

Autoweek magazine reports as follows:


"Germans also are concerned about seeing sound but aging cars disappear."

"'It breaks my heart seeing perfectly good versions of the Golf GTI going to the press,' said one Volkswagen Golf GTI fanatic. 'They're highly sought after by collectors, but all their owners care about is receiving written confirmation from the scrapyard so they can collect their rebate.'"


(Interestingly enough, much of the German "Cash for Clunkers" money is flowing outside of Germany to Spain and other lower-cost producers. Thus, Germans are losing their automotive heritage in a tax-funded boondoggle and are creating a windfall for foreign producers.)

* * * *

In the blinded minds of the radical, freedom-hating Greens, racing, hot rodding, tuning, customizing, antique car collecting and other grassroots automotive pursuits involving historic vehicles are "killing the Planet." These freedom-hating, power-grabbing, "we-know-what?s-best-for-you" environuts cannot fathom why anyone would waste their time pursuing any automotive hobby or automotive aftermarket vocation in the first place. They will never understand that participation in these automotive pursuits often define much of who we are (just as hiking in the woods, eating tasteless vegan food, and blocking the fast lane in their slow, wimpy Priuses defines who they are).

The liberal "true believer" greens see such "Car Crazy" "rebels" as an impediment to their dream of banishing internal combustion and the 20th Century "car culture" to the ashcan of history. And the only way to "kill the Car Nuts" and subjugate them to the "uniform, happy, shiny, government-designed, sanitized, tamper-proof, disposable electro-micro car 'reservation'" is to flatten the "obsolete," "dirty," "rebellious" objects of our "Car Crazy" passion. In other words, crushing our supply of historic and milestone parts cars and "project cars," and thereby destroying the businesses which depend on them is in essence the "slaughtering of our buffalo."

Just as slaughtering the buffalo didn't exterminate all of the Plains Indians, a well-heeled and resourceful remnant will survive [the] war on Automotive "choice." But our "tribes" will be much smaller, much more insular, and much less diverse. And the "entry costs" for participation will escalate dramatically.

* * * *

Make no mistake about it, "Cash For Clunkers" is a declaration of war against the automotive aftermarket and all "old car" automotive-based hobbies.

Excerpted from http://speedzzter.blogspot.com/2009/...ration-of.html