I’m here to tell you the opposite. “Cash for Clunkers” did allow me to keep 3 jobs in my business....as repo men!
The dealership closings dropped the prices on car haulers, which I couldn’t pass up. And then the bank called about picking up cars that had deliquent loans.
It helps to be flexible in these times!
I traded my Ford F-250(clunker)in for a new Ford-150 during the C-4-C time frame...the program forced my Ford dealer to meet or exceed the other clunker deals out there...so in that respect, it helped me get a deal and my small town dealer move a lot of inventory....and btw, my F-150 is getting 19.5 mpg and my old F-250 was only getting 12.
My mom’s first car, a brand new Camaro, was $1500. Yes, one thousand five hundred, NEW. You can’t find a heap for that anymore. You need parts, you pay dearly. You need a whole car, and you can’t afford more than $1500, you are just out of luck.
....one aspect of this that’s just now starting to come out is that a lot of the clunkers weren’t destroyed....phony paperwork was created so the dealers got government payments...then the actual vehicles were sold overseas...Ka-ching!
It did get about 90% of the "I LUV OBAMA" bumper stickers off the road.
That was the way the State-Run Media always introduced it.
The cash for clunkers didn’t accept the REAL clunkers,it just took lots of late-model affordable cars to the scrap mills.