cash for clunkers death videos
 

lets post up our favorite reasons why this program was stupid.

who does it hurts the most? working class people who rely on the sub $8000 used car market to help them eek out a living

people in congress earn about $180,000/year with killer health insurance...
they're too disconnected and dumb to realize all the economic repercussions of their actions. Actions that seek making G.M. profitable asap (for political reasons) and more dubiously, appeasing those wasteful, inefficient, overpaid U.A.W. assholes that pack on the campaign and lobbying dollars.


i'll start.

a delightful (and a favorite car of mine) the E34 BMW 530.
an awesome 3.0 litre V8 5-speed sedan (a killer combo) in awesome condition.





how about a mint condition 2000 S80 twin turbo Volvo.. a great 270hp or so daily driver




another favorite car of mine.. jeep wagoneer




and to finish things off with stuff to make the nissan crowd :sadwavey:

a Z31 300zx



no death shot but you get the idea

lets not kill this thread with anti/pro obama bullshit.. if theres any debating to happen lets keep it intelligent.. keep it about Cash for Clunkers, economic repercussions, future political implications (the notion of gov't stimulated demand economics sure pisses me off), etc...

i first came across those videos while doing research for a E28 M5 i might buy. on this website German Cars For Sale Blog | Archive | BMW it looks like one of those was clunkered.. man people are stuuuupppid


a maserati biturbo.. sure its a bad maserati.. but come on



lets think about how dumb the program is one more time.. the government raises taxes to sell cars, (by using tax dollars to buy up cars) they in turn take the influx of affordable cars (vital during a shitty economy with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years) and crush them... that in turn raises prices.. its like a double f-u in the name of more profit for a hostile-politician-takeover'ed industry. lets not forget that obama personally booted out GMs CEO.

wow. i cried.

That Z was a slicktop too, those are rare.

lets add a 118,000 mile mercedes sel to the mix




this next one is really hokey but theres a q45 shown on death row, also a really nice silver pathfinder that id definately scoop up for 4500 bucks

Man.. just the first video alone was so disappointing.

Dude the people that gave those cars in are fucking retarded. That Volvo was hecka nice, you could sell that for more than 4500, fuck Obama.

Seriously. I just don't understand how that volvo qualified as a "clunker" when some of us with our twice as old cars can still pass smog... Whoever turned that in was a retard.

That E34 was nice,that thing held up really well and looked reliable. Sadly I couldn't rescue it to use a a DD :( I also wished that I could have jacked that nardi steering wheel off that maserati before they crush it

this whole program is automotive genocide. such a terrible idea.

Waste of resources? Wonder how well they honestly recycle and dispose of the vehicle after the engine is fried. I guess we have to remember.. this cash clunker crap was to boost the economy, not the environment...

America fuck yeah!!

if people are giving away these cars to the program, they dont deserve new cars imo.. Those old cars are better designed then todays new plastic cars..



whatever chevy they traded that Jag for, will be worth the same value of that Jag in 2 years lol

They fuck the motors and junkyards sell everything else.

This is the beginning of the end, I called it last Nov.


They couldve sold those parts to people who needed them, and gave the profits back to the tax payers. Anybody else see whats going on? I love talking to the liberals who think this is helping all the people in poverty get into more reliable cars. I had a 09 VW rental that self destructed at 5k miles.

fuck the people who make a million cars a year.. we dont need soo many goddamn new cars on the market when theres a shitload of GOOD old cars still around.. its their fault no one is buying new ones because the ones they bought a few years ago are still great. HOW ABOUT DROPPING GAS PRICES AGAIN? lol that will get the economy rollin again.


sorry to go off. =)

one of my coworkers has a volvo s80 just like in the video, that car is fast man so sad someone traded it in

^^^right on! And it seems the older cars getting crushed are more reliable than the new ones!

It costs money to run this program, its like paying people the cost of your product, to buy your product. Its fucking us hard.

We've had a few nice cars come into our dealership through this program, like a lexus ls400, a bmw 740, and others Most of them are just beat up old jeeps though.

Ugh, what the fuck. These videos make me rage hard.

Who in their right fucking mind would trade some of these in?

Just to conform to the sheeple standards again. Idiots. I hope your down payment on your new econobox was worth it.:bash::bash:

Most of the 'clunkers' traded in were US suv's & large trucks.
Most of the new cars purchased were US & Japanese compacts.
Ford F-150 was also popular purchase.

Program lasted approx a month from June 24-Aug 24th w/ around 2.77 bil in rebates.

I'm glad the program stopped at 3 billion.
What worried me the most would be that the program lasted indefinetly & cost taxpayers much more.
3 billion isn't chump change, but it is better than say some 36 bill annual budget

I guess if I had to criticize the program,
it would be that there wasn't higher mpg standards for the new cars purchased.
you're not exactly being eco-friendly if you're trading in an old guzzler for a new F-150 truck.
Still, the average car being traded in had approx 16mpg.
The average new car bought as a result of CARS was around 26 mpg.
660,000 auto transactions occurred with the CARS program.

About some of the nicer cars worth well more than $4,500 being traded in (Volvo S80 twin-turbo, maserati, etc),
that's the owner's stupidity and not the government's fault per say.
The government didn't force anyone (other than the taxpayer & their funds).
Car owners choose to trade their cars in.

You also have to figure there are existing government rebates on hybrids and diesels on new cars.
think the prius, jetta tdi, civic hybrid all get some $1,400 tax rebates as is.
If I had some ford exploder sitting around,
I wouldn't mind trading it in & getting some $5-6k off a civic hybrid.

Car Allowance Rebate System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ronmcdon you raise some great points. environmentally, sure theoretical fuel savings are a definite possibility. but whats not to say that drivers who have suddenly lowered their per/mile operating costs wont drive more because they can more easily afford it, you saw the reverse happen last year w/ 4.50 gas.

also, the fundimentals of why this this program was enacted are surely questionable. political motive is always in the politicans best interest first. checkout this acceptance speech on that noble prize winning concept.

The Prize in Economics 1986 - Presentation Speech (a link to nobleprize.org a zilvia first woo hoo)

"The same individuals that act mainly in their self-interest as members of households and firms and seek to increase utility or profit are also members of the political system. It is hard to believe that these individuals drop the self-interest and turn into economic eunuchs devoting themselves completely to social engineering in the service of the general interest."

its called public choice theory. (a link to nobleprize.org a zilvia first woo hoo)

basically, a political action is undertook always holding the self-interest of the acting politician as its primary influence.

these notions are my primary concern why now is suddenly the time to incentivise a market in a way that hasn't been done (or more importantly NEEDED) in its 100+ year history.

lets end this quazi-academic rant with some beautiful jags getting killed in the name of some baby yaris or kia shitbox that needs to take its place at home



haha these vids are on par with old yeller being taken out to pasture


80s jags are another junky favorite.. they are just soaked with style. the ubiquitous chev v8 swap makes these things reliable daily-chuggers

in our town there is a z32 na with like 118k on it

but maybe those "nice cars" had transmission issue, electrical problems, or blown head gasket....etc.

Its sad to see good cars go to waste :( When I need a DD bad

I just hope nobody turned in any ls1 camaros or trans ams

(goes to sob in corner)

this is truely sad, wish they woulda had a auction at the local town to get rid of them before the death

the program was very good in two major ways. first, it was basically a direct cash gift to anyone trading in a car worth less than $4500. second, and relatedly, it led to the creation of alot of new debt. debt is what stimulates an economy in fractional reserve banking system. debt = money creation = excess liquidity = cheaper borrowing = more business activity.

a cash gift to consumers keeps the market in the decision making process, because consumers (rather than politicians) allocate, by their purchasing decisions, where the stimulus money goes. in effect, it doesn't distort the market like a bailout, which rewards poor automakers in favor of superior ones.

the only gripe i have with the program is purposely destroying all those engines. they were still useful and purposely destroying them is economically and environmentally wasteful. it takes a massive amount of energy/pollution to produce each car; so it only makes sense you'll get maximum benefit if you can get as much use out of each car, or its constituent parts. the destruction of those parts is the result of a distorted hippie-ish view on the importance of mpg over conservation.

That statement is asinine. Let me remind you how we got into this whole economic mess- the subprime lending debacle. Dems wanted every crackhead and high school dropout on the street to own their own home. The government pushed lenders to lend money to people who never could have hoped to repay the loan. Interest rates go up, houses get foreclosed upon, whole market comes down like a house of cards.

So what's our solution? SELL CARS TO PEOPLE WHO CAN'T AFFORD CARS, at any cost. This whole program is going to lead to repos and defaults up the ass, and we're going to have another mess on our hands.

fucking jagoffs could have sold me the engine from that z31.

this program is all about stimulating car sales (and it didnt even do a good job of that--becasue now it is over and no one is buying cars). It has nothing to do with the environment like the obama admin. claimed. It is actually worse for the environment. Think how much poultion goes into making a new car. It also puts people into more debt who previously had cars that were all paid off. (think about what happened with the housing market - see any parallels here?)

the problem with subprime lending was super lax lending standards.

the whole reason you need new debt creation/direct stimulus to consumers (which btw, is the only way out of a keyenesian liquidity trap) is because the credit markets are frozen with high lending standards; banks are tight with their money.

in short, the people who actually have the ability to take advantage of the program are going to be people who can qualify for loans under these conditions, and actually need a loan to buy a car.

i.e. the first qualification basically eliminates the super poor; these are not mexican farmhands being sold $500,000 dollar homes here with inane lending. the stimulus is going straight to the middle class.