Cash For Clunkers: Fortune Favors the Impatient
Do you have a vehicle that was eligible for the government’s CARS program until the EPA revised old mileage averages? If so, your vehicle is no longer eligible for the $3,500-$4,500 incentive. If you had set up a deal before the final rule came out, however, the government will hook you up regardless. “We’ve tried to come up with the fairest possible solution under the circumstances,” CARS’ long-suffering spokesman, Rae Tyson, explains to Automotive News [sub]. But it’s hard to see what exactly is fair about that. Didn’t NHTSA specifically warn that “if a dealer chooses to structure a transaction before the final rule is issued, they will bear the risks associated with later demonstrating that the transaction meets all of the specifications of the final rule”? Why are the folks who ignored the warning being rewarded, while those who waited for the rules get the shaft? More importantly, if anyone got away with engine-melting a 1987 Alfa GTV (recently reprieved by the EPA mileage mulligan), there are going to be phones ringing in at least one congresscritter’s office. Hit the jump for a complete list of clunkers which saw their eligibility change due to the EPA revision.
VEHICLES NOW ELIGIBLE
1987 Buick Regal
VEHICLES NO LONGER ELIGIBLE
1987 Alfa Romeo GTV
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- Redapple2 Love the wheels
- Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
- Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.
- Kwik_Shift_Pro4X Off-road fluff on vehicles that should not be off road needs to die.
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I don't get all the comparisons of the total suckage of this scrappage program with the post office. USPS has its problems, but as an ebay trader I can nearly always count on two- to three-day priority mail service coast to coast, and one package in the last ten years has failed to arrive, and no package has arrived with the contents damaged so I had to make good on it. The scrappage program, on the other hand, just plain effing sucks. The only way it could be made better imo is if the turned-in vehicles were turned over for free to the local demolition-derby crowd. That would realize the objective of getting them off the roads.