Frankly, the video's worth it just to see Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee defend the administration's impact on Truckasaurus.

[The Daily Show]

My local self-service yard, already jammed with customers thanks to the departure of Pick Your Part from the region, now has so many 5-to-10-year-old SUVs, pickups, and minivans that they've been forced to line them up in the paths between rows, door handles touching. How about a spotless '05 Jeep Liberty? Seen it. Early-2000s Explorers? Stack 'em like cordwood! All this value being squandered, much like the long-gone profits Detroit raked in on these behemoths… but soon the clunkers will pass through the system and we'll be back to normal recession-style junkyard inventory.

I stopped by a couple of my local self-service wrecking yards yesterday, just to see what new and interesting clunkerization victims I might find. Not long ago, we saw a glut of clunkicided Japanese luxury machines, and now it's Mercedes-Benz's turn. This is just a small sampling of the dozens of big Benzes with the telltale pink paint on the engines. You want really nice body and interior parts for your spared-from-clunkdown Mercedes? Come on down!

Just for fun, let's price a few more of the cars we see here (2009 dollars in parentheses).
1990 560SEL: $73,800 ($121,871)
1988 260E: $37,250 ($64,837)
1988 300TE: $46,980 ($85,713)

We already provided you our first look at the "exotics" we found in our quick skim of the full list.We know the Jalopnik nation is just itchin' to help us find the strange, the odd and the outright illegal trade-ins that can be found in the full list. So help us out by taking a look through the pages, broken down alphabetically, to view the full list of vehicles and the quantity crushed. Tell us what you find in the comments below.

But be warned — Audi S4 wagons, armored BMWs, GNXs and other treasures were junked. Prepare to be devastated, car lovers.

Make sure to click the "Full Size" button to view the pages in the largest size possible if you're having trouble reading.

AM General Postal Truck to Chevy S10 Blazer

Chevy S10 Pickup to Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor

Ford Crown Victoria Police Intercepter to GMC Vandura

GMC Vandura to Mercedes 380SL

Mercedes 380SL to Subaru SVX

Subaru SVX to Volvo XC90

In just our cursory glance over the document we found a large number of USPS postal vehicles, a surprising number of cars newer than 2005, and a lot of Corvettes. What stood out for you? What are the most exotic trade-ins? The strangest? The most upsetting?

We'd point out these vehicles have to have been insured and driven for a year, so it's not as if these were merely broken shells of these exotic makes. Someone had to destroy a roller for, at most, $4,500 off a new car. Click next to see what cars were destroyed, how much they originally sold for, and how rare they were.

[NHTSA via Detroit Free Press

Vehicle: BMW 850i
Year: 1992
Original MSRP: approximately $100,000
Rareness: Only 30,000 built

Vehicle:Aston Martin DB7 Volante
Year: 1997
Original MSRP $137,000
Rareness: Only 7,000 built; therefore, there are only 6,999 left at most

Vehicle: Roush Stage 3 F-150
Year: 2006
Original MSRP: Approximately $46,000 after upgrade
Rareness: Unknown

Vehicle: GMC Typhoon
Year: 1992
Original MSRP: $29,320
Rareness: Only 4,697 produced

Photo Credit: Obnoxious Motorsports

Vehicle: LaForza SUV
Year: 1990
Original MSRP: $60,000
Rareness: Unknown, but assumed rare since the Ford-powered $60,000 Italian SUV wasn't amazingly popular.

Vehicle: Mercedes C43 AMG
Year: 1999
Original MSRP: $53,000
Rareness: Only 4,200 units built

Vehicle: Bentley Continental R
Year: 1997
Original MSRP: $307,000
Rareness: Only 1,290 built

Vehicle: Excalibur Autos Phaeton
Year: 1987
Original MSRP: Unknown
Rareness: Unknown, but fairly rare

Vehicle: Buick GNX
Year: 1987
Original MSRP: $29,900
Rareness: Only 547 produced

Vehicle: Maserati Quattrporte
Year: 1985
Original MSRP: $80,000
Rareness: If it's a 1985 U.S. model then it is likely the Royale, of which only 55 were built to order for Americans

Oh, there were also plenty of Infinitis and Acuras to be picked over for nice non-engine parts, but for every Q45 there must have been five LS400s. Some of them were very clean, too. I sure hope some of these cars survived to become LeMons racers!

As beautifully engineered as Lexus vehicles are, the sight of your typical ES300 or GS430 in The Crusher's waiting room doesn't really bring a flood of tears to my eyes. But an extremely straight '87 Cressida? Nooooooo! Imagine destroying your Cressida so you can buy a Focus!

That's right, many mid-to-late-80s Cressidas and Maximas were caught up in the Clunkpocalypse, joining all those high-end BMWs, Jags, and Benzes.

We'll just kill the middle man here. Ford fan-boys, give us your stories — forget about giving it to Ford. They'll just censor it anyway.

The crux of Aiyar’s argument centers around the immorality of denying perfectly good cars to people in less fortunate areas of the world, while allowing criminals to enrich themselves by reselling cars meant for the crusher:

Germany’s police union, the Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter, estimates that about 50,000 cars destined for the scrap yard under Berlin’s trade-in scheme have been illegally resold to Africa and Eastern Europe. The government had paid around €125 million [$180 million] for these vehicles to be destroyed so that people would buy new, more fuel-efficient cars. German environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe predicts a doubling of illicit exports by the end of the year. It’s probably only a matter of time before American clunkers will likewise find their illegal way to the streets of Mexico and beyond. And humanity would be better off if they did.

Imagine if the Salvation Army were ordered to destroy all the used clothing and furniture it receives instead of distributing it to the poor. No doubt this would be considered an outrage. But it is no less economically foolish and morally repugnant to deny poor people in the developing world access to these old cars.

Read the rest at the Cato Institute’s home.

Photo Credit: THEO HEIMANN/AFP/Getty Images

Don't tell El Presidente, but many of those engine parts may not be completely destroyed; the bearings definitely get creamed by the clunkerizing process, but a standard engine rebuild ought to be able to get a clunkerized engine back in working order. Of course, in most cases it's not worth doing so, but junkyard scavengers are already grabbing cylinder heads and other goodies off clunkerated powerplants.

I made a trip to several East Bay self-service wrecking yards in search of Cash For Clunkers victims, and I found plenty! I suspect that most of the Explorers, F150s, Cherokees, and the like are bypassing wrecking yards and heading straight to The Crusher, but those searching for nice body/interior components, suspensions, transmissions, and the like for 1990s high-end European machinery are in for some happy hunting (mixed with a healthy dose of tears for all the perfectly good BMW 7 series sedans, 10-year-old Jaguars, and other cool machinery that got caught up in the Clunkpocalypse).

Likewise, builders of street rods are no doubt rejoicing over all those MN12 Fords that got Clunk-O-Lated™, because they'll find a bonanza of swap-ready IRS rear suspension setups in those Cougars, Thunderbirds, and Continentals. I found three beclunked MN12s, all in near-showroom condition, side-by-side in one yard. Meanwhile, there's a certain clunkxecuted RX-7 GSL rear end I've got earmarked for my 20R Sprite project.

1994 BMW 740.


I don't feel too bad about all those Explorers getting destroyed, but first-gen RX-7s are getting really rare these days. Looks like some gratuitous forklift damage on this one.


MN12s galore!





There are many fewer XJ6s and XJ-Ss on the streets today, thanks to Cash For Clunkers.





Let's hope some of these MN12 suspensions live on in other cars.













Many, many BMW Big Six engines have met their doom via Cash For Clunkers.

How about a 1992 BMW 318iS? No going out in a blaze of LeMons glory for this E30!









The interior in this '90 Eldorado was just about perfect.


1990 Cadillac Eldorado