Cash For Clunkers

I was listening to the news today and lately I have been hearing so much about the Cash for Clunkers. I even notice dealerships with huge signs promoting this, but what is the real deal here? Unfortunately, Cash for Clunkers will be ending on Monday. From what I heard, the dealerships are getting fed up because the paperwork process is taking forever and they have yet to receive their money. This is a huge deal because they are selling lots of cars, and without the money, they are starting to worry.





Has anyone gone through with Cash for Clunkers? If you have any interest, below is what you need to do, to follow through with this. The weekend is going to be busy at the dealerships, but hopefully you can get yourself a good deal. Here is some information in regards to this:

* To participate in the CARS program, you do not have to sign an agreement to pay back the dealer the CARS credit amount if the deal is rejected.
* You are required to leave your trade-in vehicle at the dealership and sign over the title to the trade-in vehicle at the time of the deal.
* The dealer must give you the new vehicle at the time of the deal.
* Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
* Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify.
* Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements).
* Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in.
* You don't need a voucher, dealers will apply a credit at purchase.
* Program runs through Nov 1, 2009 or when the funds are exhausted, whichever comes first. (WHICH HAS NOW BEEN CHANGED TO MONDAY, AUGUST 24th at 8 PM)
* The program requires the scrapping of your eligible trade-in vehicle and that the dealer disclose to you an estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in. The scrap value, minus $50 the dealer keeps for administrative fees, will be in addition to the rebate, and not in place of the rebate.

I feel that this program is pretty awesome, and it really did make a big impact on the American population.

Here is some information I found from CNN Money:

Officials decided to wind down the program, which Congress passed to spur flagging auto sales, after determining that it would soon run out of money.

As of Thursday, the program has recorded more than 457,000 dealer transactions worth $1.9 billion in rebates.






The expected number of transactions that are expected by the time the weekend ends is over 750,000. There are many different sides to this topic, since some feel that doing this, will now lower car sales for quite some time and put us into a bigger ditch, while others feel this is a start to something big and better. Who knows! Only time will truly tell!

JetBlue was doing something too with flights. You could buy a whole package of flights for a month, for only $600 I believe. They are bringing that to an end as well. It really makes people jump when they see deals like the Cash for Clunkers and the Airline situation.

The economy has been hurting, so it will be interesting to see how things shape up in the long run!