Archive for the ‘CARS program’ Category

Vehicle history provider Carfax has partnered with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to introduce a new Clunker Check service.

The simple Carfax query page allows you, merely by entering the vehicle identification number (VIN) of the suspect vehicle to check whether it was written off for salvage as part of the federal government's Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), better known as the Cash for Clunkers program, earlier this year.

The Clunker Check service is free, and independent of the company's Vehicle History Reports. And it includes the VINs of all vehicles traded-in as part of the program.

In less than 30 days this...

When Edmunds.com released its report on the Cash-for-Clunkers program on Wednesday, saying it cost $24,000 for each vehicle that wouldn't otherwise have been sold, it must have expected pushback.

It may not have anticipated, however, a sharp retort from the highest office in the land: the White House. But that's what it got yesterday, via a pithy entry on the White House blog calling the Edmunds analysis "implausible" and "faulty".

It not only refuted Edmunds' contentions by citing a report from the Council of Economic Advisors, but accused Edmunds of releasing sensational Clunkers analyses solely to draw media attention.

The White House...

The Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) was proposed as a necessary and cost-effective way of stimulating the economy and the car industry when it was being debated this summer. Once it went into action, it proved hugely popular, needing emergency funding expansion to meet the demand. But what was the ultimate cost?

Turns out it was about $24,000 per car sold, or per clunker turned in, depending on how you look at it. That's about $6,000 below the industry-wide average transaction price--meaning the CARS program was about 20% cheaper than  buying the cars that wouldn't otherwise have sold outright.

Whether that's a good deal or not depends...