Archive for the ‘cash for clunkers’ 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...

It's obvious from the comments on this site and others in the High Gear Media family that Cash-for-Clunkers remains a hot-button issue, and new data about the program is likely to fuel the fire: according to stats from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, most car buyers used Cash-for-Clunkers to swap out their domestic ride (frequently a Ford Explorer or F-150) for a foreign model. The notable exception: Michigan, where over 81% of Cash-for-Clunkers trade-ins went toward the purchase of a domestic automobile. Other states along the Rust Belt leaned slightly in Detroit's direction, but on the whole, 57% of Americans ditched...

Speaking at a World Economic Forum in New Delhi, Carlos Ghosn -- head of Nissan Motor Company and Renault SA -- had some interesting things to say about the global auto industry. Among the most notable and encouraging items, Ghosn believes that the international sales slump has ended and that the industry is beginning to rebound. He had previously predicted global sales to ring in around 55 million units, but has now upgraded that figure to 60 million. (For reference, 2008 and 2007 each saw sales in the 70-million-unit range.)

Like his rivals at Toyota, Ghosn attributes much of the rebound to sales incentives offered by governments around...