Originally Posted By: E150GT
Originally Posted By: jdawg89
Originally Posted By: khittner
Worked fine for me. My mother-in-law fobbed off my father-in-law's early-90s Suburban gas-guzzler, and bought the most American car available (in terms of U.S.-made parts and assembly content)---a Tennessee-built Toyota Camry. She's still driving it eight years later, and saved more than half the fracked dinosaur juice that the Suburban would've swilled. She also sold her '02 Camry to me in the deal, and my son is still driving that one at 260+K miles. Multiple wins for my family from that "public policy failure".
but a perfectly good suburban got ruined out of it.
Maybe. Maybe not. Could have been a piece that was going to go to the wrecker anyway.
And if that is the case, then the replacement would have been purchased anyway.
This is a big problem with the program. For the program to have been successful, it had to take vehicles that had life in them and incentivized the buyer to trade it before they were ready to by a replacement.
If the buyer was already planning to trade anyway, because it was a clunker, or because they wanted something smaller, or whatever, then this program really didn't motivate a buyer to a transaction not already planned.
In other words, it's set for failure. If the goal was to drive ADDITIONAL sales of more fuel efficient vehicles, the trade in of something that was likely to be traded in without the program is a failure. It's not an additional sale. It was one already planned with a taxpayer funded incentive.
If the vehicle had value, then it's a loss because the vehicle is being purchased by the program and destroyed. Any value is lost because it's not being used by the government.
The program was a lose-lose proposition for the vast majority of we 300 million Americans.
It did create 2000 jobs for one year and give 700k car owners a break on their vehicle.
But for the other 300 million of us, it was a big loser.
Originally Posted By: jdawg89
Originally Posted By: khittner
Worked fine for me. My mother-in-law fobbed off my father-in-law's early-90s Suburban gas-guzzler, and bought the most American car available (in terms of U.S.-made parts and assembly content)---a Tennessee-built Toyota Camry. She's still driving it eight years later, and saved more than half the fracked dinosaur juice that the Suburban would've swilled. She also sold her '02 Camry to me in the deal, and my son is still driving that one at 260+K miles. Multiple wins for my family from that "public policy failure".
but a perfectly good suburban got ruined out of it.
Maybe. Maybe not. Could have been a piece that was going to go to the wrecker anyway.
And if that is the case, then the replacement would have been purchased anyway.
This is a big problem with the program. For the program to have been successful, it had to take vehicles that had life in them and incentivized the buyer to trade it before they were ready to by a replacement.
If the buyer was already planning to trade anyway, because it was a clunker, or because they wanted something smaller, or whatever, then this program really didn't motivate a buyer to a transaction not already planned.
In other words, it's set for failure. If the goal was to drive ADDITIONAL sales of more fuel efficient vehicles, the trade in of something that was likely to be traded in without the program is a failure. It's not an additional sale. It was one already planned with a taxpayer funded incentive.
If the vehicle had value, then it's a loss because the vehicle is being purchased by the program and destroyed. Any value is lost because it's not being used by the government.
The program was a lose-lose proposition for the vast majority of we 300 million Americans.
It did create 2000 jobs for one year and give 700k car owners a break on their vehicle.
But for the other 300 million of us, it was a big loser.
