As soon as GM and Chrysler agreed to review their dealer cull decisions, the culled dealers in question began complaining that the review would not improve their situations. According to the aggrieved dealers, the new review would be based on the same allegedly flawed data as the initial cull, meaning nothing would be changed. By GM’s own admission, only 39-51 of the over 1,000 dealers cut would even stand a chance at reinstatement. Now, Automotive News [sub] reports that a new measure has passed the House of Representatives which would allow dealers to “present any kind of relevant information during the arbitration.” The measure comes in the form of an amendment to the House Financial Services bill, which is headed to a conference committee in which House and Senate leaders must arrive at a compromise in order to send the bill to President Obama.

Bowing to legislative pressure, GM and Chrysler have announced today that they will initiate reviews of the dealer cull undertaken during bankruptcy. GM is announcing a “Comprehensive Plan To Address Dealer Concerns,” while Chrysler characterizes its agreement as a “Binding Independent Review Process for Discontinued Dealers.” Both firms take pains to thank Senator Dick Durban and Rep Steny Hoyer for their leadership in preparing the non-legislative conclusion of months of bitter acrimony. Culled GM and Chrysler dealers, you know who to make your campaign donations to… unless you’re a member of the dissident group the Committee To Restore Dealer Rights. According to Automotive News [sub], the group says the new plans will only allow “between 39 and 51” culled GM dealers to be reinstated. “The GM proposal guarantees that they would win every arbitration,” says one member of the committee, who alleges that the new process is based on the same allegedly flawed data the initial cull was based on. Hit the jump for the plan outlines.

North of your border (not mine), GM dealers are slightly annoyed. In fact, they’re fuming. Topnews.us reports that Bob Slessor, owner of a dealership for GM has sued the firm after he was informed that his dealership would be closed before the end of 2009. And don’t think he’s the only one, 12 dealers are submitting multi million dollar lawsuits against the automotive arm of the U.S government. The lawsuits hinge on the way GM approached these dealer closures. Bob Slessor claim that GM used “high handed and oppressive” tactics. The plaintiffs are looking for a permanent injunction against their terminations and $1.5 million in punitive damages. The report didn’t state whether that figure was in U.S or Canadian dollars.

As congress nears the end of the 2009 legislative session, culled GM and Chrysler dealers are pushing hard for the rapid passage of the Automobile Dealer Economic Rights Restoration Act. Meanwhile, nearly two dozen members of the Senate Commerce Committee from both parties are calling on GM and Chrysler to resolve outstanding disputes with culled dealers in hopes of defusing the situation by non-legislative means.

Given the federal government’s ownership stake in Chrysler and GM, it is our shared obligation to ensure all impacted dealers are treated as fairly as possible. We continue to urge you to take all actions necessary to uphold the assurances you provided earlier, as well as to achieve a mutually agreeable and timely outcome to the negotiations between Chrysler, GM and the dealers. Chrysler and GM’s unprecedented bankruptcy has greatly impacted dealers, consumers, employees, small businesses, and communities across the country. It is crucial that outstanding issues be resolved as expeditiously and efficiently as possible to provide the least amount of hardship to Chrysler, GM and the dealers.

GM’s response to the senatorial call out? “Those discussions are still underway,” according to spokespeople, who refused to characterize the discussions for Reuters. Meanwhile, two examples of possible mitigating action by GM and Chrysler are not off to good starts.

While other brands are busy closing down dealers, Volkswagen is buying them. They buy the big ones, to be exact. The smaller ones have been eliminated ever since yours truly has been working for VW.

The recent revelation that congresspeople have been successful in coercing GM to rescind dealer closures in their districts, has the rest of our elected representatives (not to mention GM itself) sitting up and taking notice. In a conference call with Michigan’s congressional delegation, Fritz Henderson said GM was close to a deal which would restore a number of “mistakenly” closed dealerships. But GM hasn’t met with rejected dealers in weeks, and the Committee To Restore Dealer Rights is unaware of any such agreement. “[Henderson] was very vague, and the plan sounded inadequate to me,” Michigan Republican Hoekstra tells Automotive News [sub]. “He explained, for instance, that they might reopen some franchises if they found errors, but he didn’t say what those errors might be.” Henderson also rejected the dealer demand for compensation of $3,000 per vehicle sold in 2006, 2007 and 2008, further supporting suspicions that GM doesn’t have a deal at all. So what is happening?

Car dealers are some of the most politically connected people in America. As we reported yesterday, more than a few axed GM store owners demonstrated their political muscles by forcing the nationalized automaker to rescind their franchise terminations. Further back in time, we highlighted the Obama administration’s “stealth” dealer bailout: a car dealer-specific Small Business Administration (SBA) loan program. Under the program, the SBA guarantees 75 percent of a car dealer’s floor-plan line of credit, ranging from $500,000 to $2 million. The SBA’s network of private-sector lenders make the loans. In theory. In practice, it’s been what the Brits call a damp squib. Although Automotive News [AN, sub] fails to put any hard numbers to the program’s failure, they acknowledge that the SBA dealer deal “has had trouble attracting lender participation since its May launch.” Needless to say, the “answer” to the SBA lenders’ entirely understandable reticence/prudence is . . . bigger loans and more federal backing.

The car business literally ceased the day World Trade Center I and II fell back to the Earth. And so the savvy suits at GM created a landmark campaign “Keep America Rolling.” Generous Motors offered 0% interest for 60 months on EVERYTHING they made. Customers had to forfeit their rebates in exchange for 0% interest loans, but my god did it work. The sales rates were staggering. I personally witnessed customers at a Texas Chevy house literally fighting to be next in line to sign papers. The rumor had gotten out that 0% was going to end suddenly; the customers in this particular store believed they were in a race to sign docs before the last 0% credit was used up. That was 2001. Today eight years later, zero percent is BACK on.

The Detroit News reports that car dealers are trustworthy enough (or, more likely, influential enough) to be exempted from the House Financial Services Committee’s recently-passed version of the Consumer Financial Protection Act. The bill, intended to prevent another credit crisis through federal regulation, would have made dealers subject to Consumer Financial Protection Agency oversight had Rep John Campbell (R-CA) not introduced an amendment [ PDF] exempting them. David Westcott, chairman of National Automobile Dealers Association’s government affairs committee applauded the move

It makes sense to exclude dealers. Dealers had absolutely nothing to do with the credit crisis. The overwhelming majority of committee members clearly understand that CFPA jurisdiction over dealers is unnecessary and that increased uncertainty in the auto marketplace would limit consumer finance options and increase car buyers’ costs

It is the time of the season that used car prices fall off. I began following the wholesale used car market in 1996. I distinctly recall a dealer friend of mine, Jerry McKinney, explaining it to me this time of year “Son you better get your nuts in the nest, winter is a comin’.” Translation: a dealer needs to convert any questionable inventory on today’s market to cash. Then take a new position in fresh inventory after the flop hits.

I have no idea why Mark LaNeve still works for General Motors. The former Cadillac man was serving Kool-Aid on the bridge when CEO Rick Wagoner was Richard Nixon channeling Captain Queeg. When Old GM sank into bankruptcy, LaNeve (and Bob Lutz and Fritz Henderson and the whole damn crew) should have gone down with the ship. Instead, they transferred to another boat and headed straight for the same iceberg. No surprise there: hitting icebergs is who they are and what they do. I’m not saying that LaNeve’s recent remarks about culling GM stores [via Automotive News] reveal that he’s wrong to trim the automaker’s bloated dealer network. I’m saying that LaNeve is going about it the wrong way. Here’s my thinking . . .

Make no mistake: GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy horrendously over-dealered. GM was carrying more than twice Toyota’s 1500 dealers (with a lot less than twice the market share). The automakers’ needed to cut their franchise network down to size for reasons elucidated here on numerous occasions. The fact that the culled dealers are dogging the federally-subsidized carmakers for cash—well, you, really—is neither here nor there. It’s on YouTube! In their own words . . .

GM’s grand experiment with Ebay will be over by the end of the month, reports Automotive News [sub]. GM had extended the program once, and was considering continuing it into October. So why didn’t they? Paging GM spokesfolks… we have a cleanup on aisle nine…

The need to roll eBay out nationally isn’t there as it was when we first rolled out the pilot. At the time we had no large, national marketing programs in the system, so that made sense at the time. What we’ve come up with since then are two large, national programs that are already in place.

In other words, failure was not an option… but only because there were no parameters for failure. Gosh that sounds exactly like what Mark LaNeve said when he was asked why the program was being extended despite generating what can only be described as weak sales. Come to think of it, how was the California-only Ebay experiment a substitute for a “large, national marketing program?” More importantly, did GM sell a single vehicle on Ebay?

Before I leave TTAC, I will find and publish the list of GM dealers culled during the “transformation” from Old GM to New GM. In sworn Congressional testimony, GM’s CEO Fritz Henderson promised—begrudgingly—to provide the list of dead dealers trading to Senator Jay Rockefeller. This on the same occasion that Henderson pledged that New GM would be completely transparent to its new owners (the U.S. taxpayer). Post-hearing, Rockefeller’s office refuses to talk to me about the list; they no longer answer my calls. So either Rockefeller received the list of GM’s dead dealers from the nationalized automaker and suppressed it, or GM reneged on its promise to provide the 411. CNN’s Chris Isadore and others in the MSM couldn’t give a shit. They see the list as proprietary information critical to GM’s competitiveness. I see this as a travesty. GM and its political cronies are withholding critical information from consumers considering GM products. Consumers who own the company. So . . . I’m getting close.

Jim Tarbox is not a man who suffers in silence. Since New Chrysler handed his Jeep dealership its walking papers, Tarbox has been a man on a mission. “I was a top performing dealer,” Tarbox told me. “The executives terminated my dealer out of spite.” Tarbox ain’t just whistling Dixie. The video above features audio from U.S. Bankruptcy Court testimony from Peter Grady, Chrysler Director of Dealer Operations. Tarbox’s lawyer, Len Bellavia, confronts Grady re: a letter that says, in no uncertain terms, that New Chrysler shit-canned Tarbox because of a prior territorial beef. “He is a belligerent combative dealer who litigates and protests any new Jeep franchise in the Provo [Providence, Rhode Island] area. So management made decision to cut him. He has not operated in good faith.” Uh, what about selecting dealers to cull based on an objective, performance-related formula? Grady agrees to the idea, in principle. In practice . . .

The National Auto Dealer’s Association is warning its members that a government audit of the $3b CARS program is imminent. “We expect that a high percentage of dealers will be audited,” NADA explains in a letter reported in Automotive News [sub]. “Please make sure that all transaction paperwork and trade-in vehicles are in order.” Widespread fraud has been reported in the German clunker rebate program, particularly in regards to vehicle disposal. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Apparently pretending to destroy a vehicle and then driving it to Poland (Mexico in our case) for sale on the black market is is not an approved disposal method. Anyway, investigating fraud seems like the prudent thing to do after spending $3b in a few short weeks, but try telling the dealers that.

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.

Just kidding. No zombie watch for the Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) program, even though it’s already burned through one life and two dealer deadlines. Automotive News [AN, sub] reports that Uncle Sam’s extended the dealer deadline again, thanks to ongoing computer problems. Transportation spokeswoman Jill Zuckman “didn’t specify a particular time for the deadline, and said it depended on how long it would take the government to get the clunkers Web site up so that dealers could file claims.” While the boffins sort that out, more “issues” are arising. As of early Monday morning, dealers submitted 635,186 claims worth $2.65 billion in rebates. Although AN says the number puts the payout “close” to the $3 billion limit, C.A.R.S. may already be over budget. Add up the administrative costs and the rebate requests “stuck” in the system, and the question arises: what happens to those deals that may arrive once in a lifetime, after the money’s gone? Meanwhile, a group of dealers is keeping its “shadow” Cash for Clunkers plan going . . .

Here’s a fun one: You’re a car dealer trying to get a bunch of clunker sales processed in the last, oh, five hours of the program when the government’s computer system crashes. Was it too busy insidiously taking over the private computers of American citizens and passing the information on to foreign governments? Automotive News [sub] won’t say.

“To better meet the high demand we’re experiencing, we have temporarily shut down the service so we can expand our capacity to more quickly serve your requests. Please visit the site at a later time. We apologize for any inconvenience,” is the website’s current position, according to dealers quoted in AN. Having endured the odd server meltdown here at TTAC, we sympathize. Popularity has its downsides.

The national frenzy that is Cash for Clunkers will end Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, according to the government’s CARS website. “It’s been a thrill to be part of the best economic news story in America,” Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood enthuses in a press release (PDF). “Now we are working toward an orderly wind down of this very popular program.” Though LaHood is able to put a happy face on the program (it’s what he gets paid to do), evidence suggests that there are still a number of headaches to work through.

General Motors has announced that it will lend dealers cash to cover their government clunker rebates for 30 days while the NHTSA figures out how to wind down the program. “We want to do all we can to provide customers with timely new vehicle deliveries and dealers the liquidity they need to run their businesses,” says Mark LaNeve in a company press release. “This will continue the sales momentum of our new fuel-efficient vehicles such as the Chevrolet Cobalt, Equinox and Buick Enclave.” Or, it could mean dealers will end up owing GM instead of the government owing them.

Would you believe that two-thirds of all car dealers are still waiting for their first clunker check? Could you imagine that only three percent of all clunker deals have been been blessed by NHTSA? Automotive News [sub] has the survey for you! The only problem is that AN admits the poll was unscientific. Plus, it was an online poll. Still, the headline looks good beneath a headline in which NADA admonishes that dealers are “at risk” in making further clunker deals. And NADA’s internal surveys show that all the clunker money is already gone, reinforcing the apocalyptic tone of the AN survey.

It’s just a mess, an absolute mess. There is a billion dollars of dealerships’ money on the road.

Says Duke Brubaker, general sales manager of Champion Ford-Lincoln-Mercury-Mazda in Owensboro, KY, to Automotive News [sub]. Champion has ceased clunker participation, along with 89 other dealerships surveyed in AN’s survey of 710 dealers. NADA officials allege that CARS’ rejection rates have climbed as high as 80 percent in recent weeks. NHTSA claims they have fallen in the last ten days. How’s about another $3 billion?

Just got off the blower with Rae Tyson, stalwart spokesman for the Department of Transportation’s Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) program. Although Tyson doesn’t have the exact stats, he revealed that the agency has rejected “significantly more” than 25 percent of dealer submissions for government reimbursement. “The bottleneck is regrettable,” Rae said. “But the number represents safeguards against fraud.” The clock is ticking. As of this morning, US car dealers have submitted paperwork to the C4C program for 390,283 vehicles. That represents $1.63 billion from the $3 billion total. Minus the $50 million processing fee. So there’s $1.34 billion and change left in the kitty. [Top ten reasons for C.A.R.S. rejection after the jump.] Meanwhile, NADA spokesman Chuck Cyrill says, “a lot of dealers are pulling out of the program.” Cyrill contends that cash flow problems caused by paperwork issues are causing dealers to “limit their exposure.” The remedy is the experience. “To address dealer concerns with a backlog of reimbursement claims, DOT has informed NADA that it will commit to deploy an additional 1,000 employees to speed up its processing efforts.”

I’m having a little trouble seeing GM’s decision to reopen 30 to 50 terminated dealerships as anything other than the result of disorganized dithering. For one thing, the fact that it’s such a vague number shows that the reanimation dealer plan—such as it is—is a work in progress. Automotive News [sub] turns to GM’s Marketing Maven to explain the mechanics and rational behind the reversal: “Terminated dealers will get the right to make the first proposals, GM says. Mark LaNeve, GM’s vice president of U.S. sales, said the open points were created when poor-performing dealerships in good locations were targeted. Other points will be filled if GM discovers that customers are driving too far to reach a dealership, he said.” Needless to say, this is bound to piss-off some of GM’s 1350 or so officially terminated—rather than GMAC-squeezed-to-death—dealers. To which LaNeve “repeated his assertion that the terminations were fair and based on poor performance for sales, customer satisfaction and other targets.” Formula please? Hello? At least one ex-GM dealer’s not bothered . . .

The Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) program is a car industry bailout dressed-up as a green initiative. The University of California has put some numbers to the boondoggle. According to a study by UC Davis transportation economist Christopher Knittel, Uncle Sam’s taxpayer reach-around is paying 10 times the “sticker price” to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. At least. “While carbon credits are projected to sell in the U.S. for about $28 per ton (today’s price in Europe was $20), even the best-case calculation of the cost of the clunkers rebate is $237 per ton. When burned, a gallon of gasoline creates roughly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. I combined that known value with an average rebate of $4,200 and a range of assumptions about the fuel economy of the new vehicles purchased and how long the clunkers would have been on the road if not for the program,” Knittel said. “I even assumed drivers didn’t change their habits, although some analysts have suggested that the owners of new vehicles will drive more than they would have with their old cars.”

The latest stats from the Department of Transportation reveal that Toyota has replaced General Motors at the top of the cash for clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) program. The Detroit News reports that “Toyota has sold 18.9 percent of vehicles purchased through the clunkers program, surpassing GM, which has sold 17.6 percent . . . Detroit’s three automakers sold 42.1 percent of all clunker replacements, which is down from an initial 47 percent of sales — and slightly below the automakers’ 44 percent U.S. market share.” GM responded to the news by saying that while it appreciated the taxpayer’s help in driving demand, it was focusing all its energies on long term, sustainable growth. Just kidding. Spokesman Greg Martin told the DetN that “The sales will be a lot like the weather in Michigan in the springtime: It will change at any given time.” [Note to Greg: check your calendar.] ToMoCo was down with that . . .

TTAC Commentator JG sent us this link, and the following thought for the day:

I was thinking that the government should really be censoring these videos. If they can stand the test of time, in 50 years people will watch the videos and it will seem remarkable how utterly stupid some people are at this time. You probably don’t have time to watch this, but my favorite lines are @ 2:10: “Whatever dumbass traded this in probably bought a piece of shit that’s far worse than this thing . . . some Kia or some crap . . . such a waste.”

Until now, owning an Oldsmobile dealership was kind of like Ford’s logo-and-all, pre-meltdown mortgage: at the time it seemed bad, but history proved that the alternative was worse. After all, the Olds wind-down paid dealers up to $4 million to go away. Only now, several Oldsmobile dealers are getting a little taste of what GM’s less fortunate, bankruptcy-culled dealers have been put through. The Detroit News reports that “a handful” of Olds dealers are still owed annuity payments from the brandicide, and GM is filing those claims as “unsecured” debts of old, bad GM. Nobody likes being shorted in the neighborhood of $20K, but at least Olds dealers got something, right? Shouldn’t they count themselves lucky to be free of GM with any compensation at all? Not according to their lawyer . . .

At some point, maybe even soon, gm.ebay.com will be up and running. For some reason, the GM – eBay program—highly touted by CEO Fritz Henderson on the day of GM’s re-emergence from bankruptcy—only runs from August 11 (tomorrow) through September 8. So we should expect to see the main site go live at what, midnight? Thankfully, at least in some sense of that word, chevrolet.ebay.com (and the Buick, GMC and Pontiac-related url) is go. Ish. “Our Best Cars. Your Best Offer” doesn’t sound right to me. Shouldn’t that be OUR best offer? And what’s with Pontiac inclusion in the boondoggle? Anyway, what will we see when the curtain goes up?

The taxpayer-funded Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) “free money” program has had its fifteen minutes of fame. When the taxpayer-funded giveaway ran out of money, the MSM went mental. Here, at least, is a stimulus program (a.k.a. bailout) that works! Now that Congress has re-upped to the tune of two billion, you can expect the story to retreat into the figurative shadows, leaving the bankruptcy-dumped domestic dealers’ media meme at least two media cycles behind. Ah, but the axed dealers are rich and reliant. They haven’t given their legislative fight to restore their franchises. Thankfully (for them), New Chrysler is giving the story a new hook: awarding new franchises in the exact same territories where they killed dealers. In other words, they “stole” the stores for their cronies. We’re talking 140 “open points.”

The autoblogosphere is abuzz with debate over the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) list of the top ten Cash for Clunking vehicles. To say the least. Edmunds [via CNN] reports that the DOT counted vehicles EPA-style, tallying differing powertrain or drive wheel combinations separately. For example, the DOT rates a Ford Escape with two wheel-drive as a distinct model from a Ford Escape with all wheel-drive. If you’re Edmunds (or any one else with an ounce of common sense), you combine all the model variants’ sales totals into one stat. And if you do that, you get a horse of a different color. The implication making the rounds: the DOT manipulated the data to hide the fact that a brace of SUVs and pickup trucks made the top ten; the Cash for Clunkers program is supposed to be about saving the environment. Yes, well, high margin pickup trucks offer the best chance of saving the domestics. So, let’s compare the DOT list (as of August 7) with Edumunds’ take . . .

Never one to miss a chance to put a left/right slant on, well, anything, today’s New York Times contains an editorial claiming that the Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) program is a triumph of the Obama administration over Republican naysayers/hypocrites/rat bastards. Blogger Timothy Egan begins by suggesting that C4C is a Republican-style economic stimulus thingie, then excoriates the elephant party for not loving it long time. “They hate it, many of these Republicans, because it’s a huge hit. It’s working as planned, and this cannot stand. America must fail in order for President Obama to fail. Don’t be surprised if the tea party goons now being dispatched to shout down town hall forums on health care start showing up at your car dealers, megaphones in hand.” Incendiary much? I’ll have mine with a side order of sarcasm, please. “But try to give struggling families a one-time boost to buy a more fuel-efficient car, with an amount that wouldn’t pay for paper clips at A.I.G., and it’s . . . outrageous!”

Car dealers know a good environmental policy gimmick when they see one. Some 60 dealers (so far) have banded together to launch a new official-looking program that offers consumers between $500 and $4,500 of “incentives” for their used or . . . wait for it . . . new car. Welcome to autostimulusplan.com world! Automotive News [sub] tries (and fails) to adopt a suitably cynical tone for the story. “The dealer program is less restrictive than the government’s. For example, it allows shorter leases than the 60-month minimum required by the clunkers plan, and there’s no limit on the price of the new vehicle; the government program sets a $45,000 cap. A qualifying trade-in must be a 2006 model or older and must have been owned by and registered to the same person for six months. The dealer program requires a buyer to purchase a replacement vehicle with 2 mpg better fuel economy.” Or, you know, maybe not (nudge nudge, wink wink). You want fine print? They got fine print!

Here’s one new car shoppers won’t be reading on the home page at Kelley Blue Book. Via press release, the car guide’s boffins wonder what will happen when the federal government stops handing out free money to clunker-driving new car buyers. Unless the Cash for Clunker scheme is extended indefinitely (a possibility) and/or widened to include other types of vehicles (less possible but not improbable), the bubble she gonna burst. And then, bad things. Euphoria, meet reality.

The Toyota Corolla has overtaken the Ford Focus as the first choice for American consumers trading their government-approved clunker for a federally subsidized new whip. According to Department of Transportation stats, ToMoCo has now captured three of the top five slots on the Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) hit list (previous version here) : Toyota Corolla, Ford Focus, Honda Civic, Toyota Prius, and Toyota Camry. Or as, the official release puts it, “Four of the top ten selling vehicles are manufactured by the Big Three. Of non-Big Three purchases, preliminary analysis suggests that well over half of these new vehicles were manufactured in the United States.” Did they mention that the “foreign nameplates” are produced in the U.S.? They did not. Nor did they offer a similar analysis of the country of origin for the trade-ins. Guess what percentage of the Cash for Clunkers trade-ins are American brands?

Official Department of Transportation stats as of 4:00 p.m. on Monday, August 3, 2009.

Dealer Registrations:

Number Submitted – 24,238
Number Approved – 20,495

Dealer Transactions:

Number Submitted – 133,767
Dollars Submitted – $563.8 million

Analysts (this armchair pundit included) are busy re-calibrating their expectations of the U.S. new car market post-Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.). The big question hanging over the proceedings: has Uncle Sam [re]created a new car bubble? And, if so, what happens when it bursts (as bubbles are wont to do)? And if so, when? Meanwhile, we’re getting answers to some of the other ponderables, such as who benefits most from taxpayer largess? In a nutshell, not the domestics. Credit Suisse First Boston weighs-in with their take on the C4C tsunami.

The Alliance of Automotive Manufacturers has declared the $1 billion-and-counting Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) program a success. The org doesn’t want any prospect of limited government (the “where do you draw the line” argument) to derail the four-wheeled gravy train. In fact, the Alliance wants the feds to re-up like a coke addict wants that third line. No surprise there. Still, there’s some interesting new info in their latest press release:

Automakers and automobile dealers have seen a significant increase in vehicle sales and dealership foot traffic since the launch of the CARS or “Cash for Clunkers” program. This increase in vehicle sales is generating important tax revenue for communities where in some cases roughly one-quarter of sales tax revenue is dependent on receipts from auto sales. And while the program has provided much need economic stimulus to the auto industry, it has also yielded significant energy security and environmental benefits.

Amongst Alliance members Ford reports a 9 MPG increase from trade-in vehicle to new vehicle purchase; GM reports a 54 percent increase in small car sales since the CARS program was launched; 57 percent of Mazdas sold so far under the program were highly fuel-efficient Mazda 3’s; 78 percent of Toyota’s CARS sales volume consists of the following vehicles — Corolla, Prius, Camry, RAV 4 and Tacoma, which average a combined 30 MPG; and Volkswagen reports over 60 percent of its CARS sales are clean diesel Jetta TDI’s which get an EPA combined 34 MPGs.