Won’t Someone Please Save Our Clunkers!
Jalopnik has issued a call to arms to its fans: Won’t someone please save our quirky classic cars. Ford Explorers - - fine, that’s one thing….but…
…this is the very last straw: “A classic example of vangenieering, is being sacrificed at Galpin Ford in Los Angeles. For what? A Ford Focus? We must let people know of the horrors. If you see a great vehicle being sacrificed take a picture and post it here. We must bear witness to the atrocity.”
Jalopnik is a site for the auto-world equivalent of Fashionistas, and the CARS Carpocalypse is hitting them hard. For the most part its devoted readers are putting a very brave face on it. But the agony:
“I saw a mid 80’s El Camino get traded in. I… I didn’t cry. I know it wouldn’t want to be looked at with misty eyes of mourning.”
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“ARRRRGH not the AMC-bodied woody! It’s like a stake through the heart!
This is seriously making my consider honoring my ethnic heritage by entering a life of crime to rescue these. It’s a damn good thing for my family’s sake that I don’t have a rollback.”
“Alright, now things have officially gone too far. Pitchforks, people!”
But finally calm understanding prevails; even among car Fashionistas:
“Getting poor people into reliable wheels would be a big step in helping folks to help themselves. One of the biggest issues for low income populations is their difficulty in getting to work on time everyday, much less being able to drop the kids off at day care and get to the grocery store.
Unreliable cars and expensive repairs can be a huge portion of the family budget, and a ticket to unemployment and poverty.”
Since the trade-in car has to get worse than 18 mpg and the new car needs to be 10 mpg better to qualify for the full $4,500 under CARS, then the gas savings will bring some much needed financial breathing room.
There is no CARS funding for trading a car for a truck or SUV that’s only 2 mpg better, per the government CARS info site.
Only if trading in one truck for another truck 2 mpg better (something that only those who genuinely need hefty trucks for work are likely to do) do you get $3,500: but if you can find one 5 mpg better - it’s $4,500. But, most people chose to save far more than that. Clunker consumers got a 69% mpg improvement with the CARS program so far; saving $750 every year. For many people that is an extra month’s rent.
For so many families now living on the edge in America, money can be saved for real needs instead of just funneling it into the monster in the garage.
As Jalopnik says: Think of the children!
Image from Rockyroad
Via Jalopnik
Susan, I like the levity of the blurb but you commited a serious blunder when you cherry picked this factiod with a straight face: “saving $750 every year. For many people that is an extra month’s rent.”
Let’s calculate how much their monthly car payments and insurance ballooned. Let’s consider the unrecoverable finance charges (interest) they’re giving away as corporate banking subsidies. Let’s consider the fees when one tries to license this shiny new car (sales tax, ownership tax, fees).
If the aggregate improvement in fuel mileage is stark as you claim (%69) I suggest the value of these uncaptured penalties is staggering. $750 won’t begin to cover it.
I worry these clunker programs are wholly wrongheaded and disguise old-fashioned ruling class agenda (industrial preservation, consumer debt strapping…)
Not to mention that most of the people that are in the demographic you want to help likely don’t have the credit rating to buy a new car. Their last car was probably bought with cash or at a we-tote-the-note kinda place and was all they could afford. $4500 isn’t going to help much when they have to finance the other $10000 at 10% interest.
Many of you felt sorry for the little clunker. Zat is because your are crazy. The clunker has no feelings and the new car is much better….
This post really confuses me - are you picking on the 1 million plus regular readers of Jalopnik? Are you suggesting that the CARS program is universally heralded as an economic and environmental success (such an assessment is hardly unanimous, see: broken window fallacy). It seems like your goal - with the multiple uses of “car fashionistas” - is somehow to mock the Jalopnik readers, but as a regular reader of both Gas 2.0 and Jalopnik, well … if there is a clever/witty comment in there, I just don’t get the joke. Case in point: I can name half a dozen people who buy hybrids as fashion accessories - and none of them read Jalopnik (or PopSci, PopMech, Make, etc.), all 6 read “People” and “Us Weekly”, though.
Pot/Kettle?
Face it for many(most?) a motor vehicle is nothing more than transportation, get used to it. Anyone who calculates, that they(not you or I) can afford a new vehicle purchase, and the purchase makes sense for THEM, what happens to the trade in is of little importance. The practical tragedy with the destruction of the trade ins, is that it eliminates the possibility of those who can’t afford a new car to purchase cars that are more fuel efficient, and safer than the true clunkers they are no driving