My inlaws used it to trade in a 93/94 explorer sport with about 170K on it for a new civic. Good for them.

I don't like the program. I feel that it created a false demand and false hope. Time will tell.

I'm just glad it was limited to 1984 and newer.

 

It cleared out some inventory and bought them some time to scale down to the current sales reality. I don't think it was enough cushion on the way down from 17 million to 9-10 million cars a year but time will tell.

At lest this $3 Billion was given back to tax payers and not Banks or Military Contractors. C4C buyers essentially bought a new car with pre-tax dollars. If they bought a cheap car then it was like using pre tax money and not paying sales tax. Not really costing tax payers any money, just denying the Gov't money on that sale.

Mathematically C4C is not different than if you got to write off 100% of your new car and had no sales tax.

I disagree with your analogy. Don't you think the island of Manhattan is worth more today than it was 400 years ago.

 

Agreed, I've read about fox cars and C4 vettes being traded in, so I'm guessing a fair amount of 3rd gen F-bodies are headed to the crusher as well.

 

YouTube is full of C4's and 3rd gens getting detroyed...

I simply can't watch them anymore.

 

I don't understand your analogy?

 

You were saying basically that making new cars and recycling the old doesn't create any wealth. You compared it to tearing down and old building and building a new one like which is done is city's like Chicago.

tough to compare since a car is a depreciating asset, but a new car could be an asset to a person compared to their old guzzler in that it saves them fuel and repair cost and will last much much longer than the car they replaced. That vehicle is a tool that help the user build wealth via getting from one place to another (like a job)

 

I used that anlogy, because the buildings in that area are perfectly fine - new or old. To tear them down and rebuild them would merely be a "make work" project at the taxpayer's expense, with no real value at the end of the day.

My issue with C4C is not so much that it is purely taxpayer subsidized, (although 3 billion dollars used to considered a mountain of money - but that's another story). My issue is using this money - mine and yours -for the destruction of perfectly useable vehicles. It's just plain dumb.

 

Agreed.

 

Not really my money. More of the money from the people that bought the cars. Like I said earlier, it is the same as if they let them deduct the full value of the car and waved sales tax. I suppose if they did that it would have been more politically popular yet had the same net results and cost to the Gov't.

 

My friend just traded his 98 F150 with ~150k on the clock last night for a 2010 Focus SE. The truck was worth next to nothing, surely less than the $4500 he got for it, since he had rolled it over and it was running with 5 different colors and missing a few parts. I think all said and done he was out the door at $12k even for a brand new car.

 

Well, that $3500-$4500 per car came out of someone's pocket.