mncarguy

Don't Let a Journalist Evaluate Cash for Clunkers

There is a flaw in your argument. Certainly it could be argued that the life of the new vehicle is 13 years, but the savings assumes that if someone didn't buy a car under clunkers, they would keep driving the clunker for that lenght of time. That probably woldn't be the case as many of these vehicles were on their last legs and the owners would have purchased a new vehicle in the short term anyway.

Auto Sales: Good News on the Horizon?

I'm not sure what you mean by "the used car environment will be drier". What will happen in the next 6 months is that late model used car prices will fall dramatically. The big three as well as most of the imports have huge numbers of unsold vehicles and the inventories are swelling daily. Chrysler has been told by manheim (the worlds largest auction company) to start selling their vehicles or get em off the auction sites. Currently, they are selling 20% of the vehicles that are offered at the wholesale level.

Eventually, (probably soon) they will have to turn these vehicles by lowering the floor prices. Dealers will by when the price is right and there will be great deals for consumers on these vehicles.

Unfortunately for the manufacturers, this puts even more pressure on new vehicle sales. Most manufacturers are predicting 09 sales to be close to or slightly below 2008.

A quick turnaround would be nice but I don't see it. 83/84 was the end of a long drought in sales. We are just 6 months into it at this point.