Cash for Clunkers: Under Budget but Underachieving
The Freep reports that final cash for clunker numbers show the program coming in under its $3bn budget. $2.877bn was spent on 690,114 deals, according to government data. The bad news? C4C did a mediocre job stimulating the domestic firms; according to the Detroit News. GM, Ford and Chrysler captured just 38.6 percent of all clunker sales, down considerably from their joint 45 percent market share in July. Toyota captured 19.4 percent, GM snagged 17.6 percent, while Ford only ended up with only 14.4 percent—just ahead of Honda which had 13 percent. Check out the NHTSA’s PDF postmortem press release on the program here. Though the Detroit Three didn’t do so well in the “cash” portion of cash for clunkers, it swept the clunker list. Ford alone had five of the top ten clunker trade-ins, with GM and Chrysler rounding out the list. Hit the jump for top ten buys and trade-ins by model.
Top-Selling C4C Models
1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Toyota Camry
4. Ford Focus FWD
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Nissan Versa
7. Toyota Prius
8. Honda Accord
9. Honda Fit
10. Ford Escape FWD
Top C4C Trade-Ins
1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Ford Explorer 2WD
5. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan 2WD
6. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
9. Ford F150 Pickup 4WD
10. Ford Windstar FWD Van
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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Calculated Risk has put up the tally by state in a sortable list along with population. Kinda fun to look at. There were 10X more Cash for Clunkers deals in Guam, for example, than in Washington DC. I'm thinking the Guam Toyota dealer (if there is one) is smiling right now.
This list is hardly a surprise given the main factor was bad gas mileage. Add poor resale due mainly to high production numbers (F-150 IS the top selling vehicle for 30 years) and this list is no surprise. Now comes the spin about how green this all is and how billions of gallons of gas are going to be saved. You have to tack a few zeros on the end of a statistic or no one notices. Tons of CO2. Millions of pounds of something else. If we are going to supplement every aspect of the economy by taking from the productive and handing it over to consumers to spend instead, can we have a few referendums on the matter? How about we start voting for the freebies instead of candidates. High vote wins. I want a few million dollars so I can retire to a beach resort in Mexico. You guys get your own bailout.
[...] than the stimulus. The two major ones were the $105.9 billion supplemental defense bill and the $2.9 billion “cash for clunkers” bill. So that’s $108.8 billion that ought to be put on Obama’s ledger rather than [...]