did you use cash for clunkers?

[disney1990]

My DD & SIL turned in their Ford Explorer (clunker) today. It was slowly/quickly falling apart. My SIL drives quite a bit for work and my daughter in school for nursing and has to drive to hospitals for clinicals. Since their car was on it's last leg anyway, it was great that they could get some extra help. They bought a Kia Soul.

 

[koima]

Nevermind.

 

[golfgal]

I am glad I finally made the plunge. This is my first new car eva and I'm no spring chicken. We usually buy a 1 year old car and keep them forever!

And about the irresponsibility thing -- #1 We paid cash.

#2 -- The dealership needed to run a credit check (they called it a "soft credit check") since we were paying cash so that they could verify we were who we said we were. We reluctantly agreed to let them run the credit checks only because we know that inquiries can bring a credit score down. The F&I guy who we signed all of the paperwork with said that my credit score was the highest he'd ever seen in the 10 years and 100 deals a month that he's done at the dealership. I will wear that with a badge of honor. He said DH's score was probably the 3rd highest. I felt so proud!

I think they got suspicious about our credit when we didn't want to them to check it.

Just an FYI, a soft check does nothing to your score, even a hard check does nothing to your score unless you have a lot of them. If you get a loan and they check your credit score the federal government makes them send a letter stating that they used it and if you don't get their best rate, whatever that is, they have to give you a reason why-if it comes back too many inquires you are in great shape. Too many might only be one, the one they pulled, but the HAVE to give you a reason and that is generally the only one available if you have good credit.

 

[tonilea]

We did, we weren't exactly planning on getting a new vehicle right now, but DH's truck was about to cost some serious money.

It was a 1994 Ford F150 with 220k. It was the best vehicle we have ever owned in terms of reliability. We bought it used in '01 w/113k miles. Besides regular maintence, we spent less than $1000 on repairs. The current value would have been about $500 or less.

So, we are driving a new Dodge Caliber for half price. We keep cars until they are worthless, so Dodge's lifetime powertrain warranty was a big plus to us.

Was it the best use of government money? I doubt it. But, the money was going to be spent anyway, so we might as well benefit from it.

Irresponsible? If you call going from debt free to a modest loan, then I guess we are irresponsible.

 

[pumba]

we went looking for a new truck the other night and decided not to buy another one.......we will keep our present truck that gets good mileage and is ours.....we went to the dealer to buy a small compact car and their attitude was.....they would not give us any lower numbers for it as they made their JULY quoto and it was AUgust first and they dont need to depend on people with a cash deal......no trade ins....we were furious.......he called yesterday afternoon to see if we changed our minds.......if he calls tomorrow I will tell him that we wouldnt buy a vehicle from him if the dealership was the last one in town.....we have dozens of places to look and we will.

ALL these cash for clunkers is making it hard for people who just want to get a car....

 

[LuvOrlando]

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[RitaZ.]

we went looking for a new truck the other night and decided not to buy another one.......we will keep our present truck that gets good mileage and is ours.....we went to the dealer to buy a small compact car and their attitude was.....they would not give us any lower numbers for it as they made their JULY quoto and it was AUgust first and they dont need to depend on people with a cash deal......no trade ins....we were furious.......he called yesterday afternoon to see if we changed our minds.......if he calls tomorrow I will tell him that we wouldnt buy a vehicle from him if the dealership was the last one in town.....we have dozens of places to look and we will.

ALL these cash for clunkers is making it hard for people who just want to get a car....

We bought a new vehicle in June. When I heard about the CFC program, I knew that what you've described would happen. We wanted to buy before the madness. The vehicle that we bought wouldn't have qualified under this program anyway, but I was concerned that the incentives offered would disappear once CFC went into effect.

When we were looking, every dealership that we went to was quite eager to sell cars. Now CFC has created a temporary demand on certain vehicles. After this program is over, it will be back to famine for dealerships.

Good luck with your future purchase. I wouldn't buy from that guy either.

 

[DawnCt1]

I am so sick of hearing that the people using this are financially irresponsible....HOW is it irresponsible to drive a vehicle to the point it's considered a "clunker" to avoid having a car payment??

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It isn't "irresponsible" for everyone. I saw some of the cars that were viewed as clunkers and some looked pretty good. There were mini vans, SUV's,etc that appeared to be rather late model vehicles. It seems wasteful to destroy them when there are actually people that could use those clunkers at a reasonable price. I wonder what this will do to the used car market. We have a 2005 Ford Explorer with 150K. It would have certainly qualified for a clunker but we like it and better still, we own it outright.

 

[LuvOrlando]

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[DVCLiz]

I hadn't thought about this side of it but agree 100%. I am certain there are people all over this country whose lives would be vastly improved with a 'free car'. After all, OUR tax dollars paid for it, it should come back to us somehow. I would like to see them give the cars out in a lotto system where entry is based upon need and only award them with 'proof' of insurance. To destroy them when so many people's cars have been repossessed is amoral IMO... I can't even imagine how arrogant and wasteful this must look to the rest of the world

While I think this was the only useful stimulus project set up the destruction end is galling.

Wait a minute - the whole point of Cash for Clunkers is to get old, inefficient cars off the road so that their poor fuel performance and higher pollution production will be replaced with better fuel and pollution standards. It's not just putting money out there so people can buy cars. If the clunkers go back on the road there's no point in having the program.

 

[DawnCt1]

Nope, my clunker doesn't qualify...1997 Grand Prix GT with 235,000 miles and still gets 27 mpg. Love my clunker, even wither her faults!

Good for you! The Grand Prix has a great engine. They last forever.

 

[DawnCt1]

Wait a minute - the whole point of Cash for Clunkers is to get old, inefficient cars off the road so that their poor fuel performance and higher pollution production will be replaced with better fuel and pollution standards. It's not just putting money out there so people can buy cars. If the clunkers go back on the road there's no point in having the program.

That was one of the points. The other point was to bolster the car industry which had already received an $80 billion boost. Our kids and grandkids will be paying for these "clunkers". Eventually every car wears out so the government paid up to $4500 for cars that would eventually come off the road anyway and replaced by more fuel efficient cars just because they are newer. For a billion dollars they could have waited.

 

[Darcy03231]

I traded in my old SUV and bought a 2009 Dodge Caliber. With the incentives and the voucher I paid about 1/2 of the MSRP of the car. Since I've been depositing the amount of the payment on the SUV into a car savings account since it's been paid off, we had more than enough money to pay cash for the new one.

 

[huckster]

Thanks to those you answered my question.

 

[chell]

has anyone here got a new car using this?How did it work for you? did you get fair trade on you turn in? did you still get added rebates if applicable?

thanks

We really do have a clunker we wanted to get rid of when this deal started. The bad thing was that my husband got laid off before it went into effect so we can't buy a new car right now. We really would have loved to use it though. Too bad we can't give her away to someone to use now as a trade in, but the car has to be in the person's name for the last year.

Are you thinking about trading one in? Chrysler is doubling the incentive if you are interested in some of their models. My step-mom was thinking about buying from them.

 

[chell]

Chevy is doing the double too, just saw a commercial.

 

[aprilgail2]

I would have loved to but my old station car is a 1999 saturn with 68,000 miles on it but it doesn't qualify and my other is an old 2003 van with 56,000 miles on it which I am looking to trade in soon anyway but that doesn't qualify either so looks like I will be buying it all out of my pocket as usual. This is the longest I have ever kept a car and I am looking to change that really soon LOL.

 

[Vistanamama]

My husband turned in our old 94 Windstar minivan and we bought a new blue Ford Focus SEL on Saturday. It is loaded and has a sunroof - something I've always wanted!
Hubby had to drive the old car down from Metro Detroit (where we live) to Kent, Ohio since that was the nearest dealer that had the car we wanted and would work with us.
There were a couple of tense days when it looked like the program was going to be suspended even though we had submitted all the paperwork and forms, but it all worked out in the end and I am thrilled with my new cute car (which so far is getting about 30 mpg!).
We got the cash for clunkers, additional dealer rebates, plus the A plan which took a total of $8000 off the price!
You can't really ask for a better deal than that! Good luck to other disers doing the clunkers program.

 

[janey99]

We leveraged CFC (didn't actually use the program) to get rid of our 2001 Toyota Highlander and get a 2009 Saturn Vue Hybrid - we've been talking about getting a new car for a while and it was too good to pass up.

The dealer convinced us to trade in the Highlander, instead of using CFC (they didn't want to deal with the paperwork), so they gave us virtually equal trade-in value and then our sales tax went down even more. We also got a rebate that was a promotion at the dealer at the time, an extra luxury package for the car at no cost because we wanted a bare-bones and we said we wouldn't buy if they couldn't get us one, we used GM dollars and my company gives a cash incentive for purchasing a hybrid. All in, we got a 42% discount off the price of the car.

This is the one time in my life a "bailout" has worked for me - I'm happy to grab it.

Jane

 

[Pigeon]

Dh and I have always tried to buy environmentally responsible cars. We've got one oldish car that I'd like to replace, but its gas mileage is too good to qualify.