Not that matters. I already know the '92 Town Car qualifies. And I also know I'm not going to send a perfectly reliable, rust-free 112K car that I own outright to the crusher to get the voucher. I'd sell it on the open market, even if I got less than $4500 for it, because throwing it away would just be wrong -- environmentally and on so many other levels.

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But there's no way that I would take part in this program. First, I don't believe in creating artificial demand - I'm no hard-core capitalist or anything, but this program is just too much useless corporate welfare for me. Loan car companies money, take an interest in them, encourage them to create fuel-efficient cars... all of that is fine. But I don't think that trying to spike new car sales is going to do anything in the longterm, and in the short term it's just going to waste money putting people in cars they don't need. Second, I really wouldn't want to buy a new car anyway - the value is just not there. As soon as you drive a new car off the lot you lose 10% or more of the value anyway, so this subsidy doesn't really even cover that. I'd rather just buy a used car in the first place. Third, there really aren't a lot of cars that I would want to trade in for, which is why I haven't traded in already. Every car that is as functional as my Jeep gets about the same mileage, but costs 10x as much. The Ford Escape isn't a bad replacement, and it gets better mileage, but then again it's a Ford. Ick.

Nope, if the gov't wants to take my Jeep off the road, they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

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I think they missed the point by mostly excluding the biggest selling SUV of all time, the Ford Explorer.

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He has a GMC Safari that he's tired of repairing. It might fetch him a couple grand on a trade-in, at best. He needs to be able to tow about 4,000 - 4,500 lbs. So he's probably going to have to stick with a truck-based vehicle.

I think his vehicle gets 16 MPG today. So he qualifies for the $3500 if he buys something that gets 18 MPG. If he can get something with 21 MPG he gets $4500.

So... which category is a truck-based minivan?

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That's some bullsh*t right there.

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Sorry, my Jalop interface is STILL screwed up. I only have like 20 characters in the entry box and all threading is lost.

Basically, a $24k tdi Jetta could be offset by $4,500 clunker cash and a $1,300 tax credit, both of which are tax free, so are worth more than their $5,800 face value (say $7,000 or $8,000 compared to earned salary money). Add some negotiation and loyalty cash, and you're at $17k pure price, $15k tax-adjusted price. (It's not fuzzy math, it's fair when comparing to other forms of income that are taxed) :D

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Good point, and very true that improvements in mpg (percentage-wise) translate to more gallons when moving from a gas guzzler. But a 10mpg difference is still a 10mpg difference, no matter what the vehicle. That said, I wonder why they didn't base this program on percentage improvements, rather than hard number improvements.

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1. Get an economically disadvantaged person to consider buying a depreciating asset they probably can't afford, but make it $4,500 more affordable.
2. Provide a few hundred dollars in profit to a dealer.
3. Provide maybe $1,000 profit to a manufacturer.
4. Offer some nebulous environmental benefit, assuming China and India stop growing and no more volcanos erupt.

I do not like this plan.

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A lot of people are just freaked out because it's been successful in Europe, which as we all know, is BAD, SOCIALIST, COMMUNIST, AND SCARY.

If you really want to go and get your panties in a wad about 'wealth redistribution,' that could hypothetically include any activity that the government spends money on. As a taxpayer, you sort of have to expect that some of that money will be spent on all sorts of shit you don't personally benefit from. That's just what governments do.

As an aside, my girlfriend's stepdad is very excited that his 95 GMC van (that the rest of the family is embarrassed to ride in) will soon be worth $4500. Backstory: he's a mechanical engineer, who just has a thing for crappy cars, and until recently, hadn't purchased a vehicle from a dealer lot in decades simply on principle. My mother-in-law-to-be got really sick of the post-it notes in their cars explaining how to drive without getting stranded, so they bought a slightly used 08 Taurus.

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The only people who are going to benefit at all from this are older folks who will cheerfully send their minty-fresh Ford Panthers to the scrapyard. Anyone driving a car worth under three grand can't afford the payments on a new car. Additionally, this plan is nearly worthless for passenger cars, at least in New Hampshire - this might take some beat-to-shit Cutlass Cieras and Crown Vics off the road, but it will do nothing about the flood of trashed Cavaliers and rusted-out fourth-gen Accords.

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