Buyer's Remorse - C4C

Topics:  Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS)

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
September 22, 2009

Check out this interesting article about the results of the Cash for Clunkers program. You know - that program that was supposed to blow through $1,000,000,000 but ended up sucking $3,000,000,000 into the auto industry.

The article? http://autos.aol.com/article/cash-for-clunkers-greenwash

Read about the larger-than-expected number of buyers who wish they hadn't. Read that the average new-car payment is $317 for 49 months. (That's lower than I thought it would be.)

And that fuel consumption is expected to increase because the new cars will be driven more miles than the clunkers were: 10,894 estimated annual mileage for the first 239,000 C4C vehicles vs. 6,162 miles for the clunkers. An estimated 700,000 new cars left dealers' lot under this program.

And this clincher? "Other critics groused that Cars for Clunkers took $2.8 billion from the general roster of 300 million citizens and handed it tax-free to a small group of 700,000 citizens." "Cars" stands for "Car Allowance Rebate System".