I wonder if it’s worth looking into, while I have time. I have a 2000 Toyota Tundra V8 that gets about 13mpg on surface streets, and maaaaaaaaaybe 18mpg on highway. It’s in great running condition, but beat to shit cosmetically from hauling bales of hay, bags of feed and bedding, contruction materials, furniture, and getting scratched scraping fences and such (it’s a working truck, not a pretty truck, after all).
Thing is, to replace it, I’d still need something capable of pulling a 5000+lb horse trailer, which usually isn’t the most fuel economical. I’d think it’s worth about $5000ish, so $4500 isn’t awful…is it worth a peek? We could use something a tad more family-friendly too, with baby #2 on the way. Maybe a larger SUV?
(Of course, it would mean a car payment…and car payments, no matter how reduced, cost more than NO car payment.)
Referencing the reported termination of this $1 billion program, makes you wonder how efficiently the federal government would run a $1 trillion + healthcare program.
Even conservatives admit the government already runs a first-class healthcare system. It just happens that it is reserved for our troops, not for everybody.
On the radio driving in to work this morning, the news announcer said that the White House clarified that the program was not officially suspended, only being “evaluated.” We’re on tenterhooks, because we were looking at to buying a Prius on Saturday.
All you need to know is that it is a government program and by definition, it will be a miserable failure that will wind up costing us more money in the long run.
According to the New York Times, “The White House said Friday that the “cash for clunkers” program was still alive even though new-car shoppers appear to have already snapped up all the $1 billion that Congress had appropriated for it.” The article goes on to say that they are looking for additional funding for it.
We were at a dealer last night finishing up our paperwork when they got an email saying to not do anymore. Ours still went through but today is a crapshoot. I’m fairly certain that if the program is that “successful” (using the goverment’s definition of success) that they’ll find a way to throw more money at it.
I’m interested to see some real figures here. Assuming an average award of $4000 per trade in, this means that they sold 250,000 vehicles in 4 days. That’s about as many mid sized cars as they sell in a whole month…not completely unbeleivable, but still…
There are around 20,000 car dealers in the US so 250,000 cars is only about 12 per dealer. A new car dealer selling 12 new cars in 1 day is not unheard of at all for many dealers.
Doesn’t anyone find it frightening that these are the same people who want to control our health care?? They can’t even do a Cash for Clunkers properly.
And completey unrealistic for others. For example, before they closed a bunch of dealers, something like 50% of Chrysler dealers sold less than 100 cars per year.
This thread has veered off course enough that I’ll move it, for now, to IMHO. I’m not sure it rises to GD level yet.
I’ll close with a comment: It’s too bad that many posters can’t seem to be bothered with trying to answer the question posed by the OP. All they appear to do is derail the thread with political comments/jabs and then the other sharks are attracted by the blood.