We killed a TON of cars during that period. The GM 3.8L and 4.3L were stubborn as hell. We had a 4.3L Astro van run for four hours with a brake pedal depressor on the throttle pedal. WOT for half a day with a chemical designed to seize an engine in the sump, sumbitch didn't wanna quit.
Hear hear. GM guys talked about how hard the 4.3 V6’s were to kill, Ford guys took sadistic pleasure in prolonging the torture of many a 300 Six, and CDJR dudes took out at least one 6BT Cummins near me which should have been a felony
To me it was a horrible experience. I likened it to euthanizing kittens.
Most of the cars were decent with plenty of life left. Most of them were OBDII with fully monitored emissions systems, where a CEL would force you to make repairs anyways.
Some of them REALLY struggled to die. A Jeep Cherokee and a BMW Z3 come to mind.
Once the cars went to the junkyard the engines were spray painted pink, and they weren’t allowed to sell any part of the engine.
I did get me a lightweight alternator for my 944 off a quest minivan after it clunked, so it wasn’t alll bad I guess.
Edit: also we got a bunch of health warnings and big rubber gloves. It leaves a nasty residue anywhere it dries
The first dealer I worked at we ripped known good parts and put in junk defective ones before doing the death sentence on them.
They said they had to be complete and never said it had to be functioning.
The amount of almost brand new tires and nice aftermarket radios my friends at the dealer got were insane. We were teens at the time so that side hustle was a lot of money to them at the time.
That's actually really smart.
During that time my good friend worked in management for a large dealer. There were so many nice cars coming through that I begged if I could buy them. Mustangs, Jeeps etc. He said it pisses him off but they legally were not allowed to sell the cash 4 clunkers cars, they HAD to be destroyed. It was such a fucking waste of good cars.
Totally fucked the used market for years. It made the $1k pickup truck extinct. Made it impossible to buy much of anything for less than like $3k, and they stayed true for a while because people were buying shutboxes off CL just to C4C them.
Us shitbox aficionados had a very dark era.
It’s STILL fucked. I fully believe this is why US used cars are so expensive. Every once in a while YouTube will suggest a UK buyers guide to Boxsters or BMWs and I’m amazed at how much cheaper they are in England vs the US
There were some dealerships that were giving people the 3500 or 4500 and then reselling the cars, was legal as long as nothing was submitted to the government, just shady af
That sounds like an utterly ridiculous program.
So you had to burn a load of fuel until the engine stopped, to make sure that it was unable to be reused in another vehicle?
What purpose did this claim to serve? Just getting working vehicles off the road so that manufacturers can sell more new cars?
It was essentially to help dealerships sell more cars because people were holding onto the old ones too long. This isn't the stated reason but that's what it was. It also completely fucked the used car market so it's difficult to find anything worthwhile for less than $5k
I can’t wait for all the current new cars to be 10-15 year old used cars! /s
Seriously, modern cars are going to be an absolute nightmare when the electronics start to age out and fail.
Or used to cost $5k and now is unavailable. Your only option is to find a junkyard one except the junkyard ones are also all failed too since there was a manufacturing defect.
That or the replacement refuses to work due to a serial number mismatch and it was programmed in such a way that not even a dealership can override it.
The manufacturers should have been required to publish the CAN message formats and addresses for every vehicle. Right now the CAN message on one maker’s cars that’s supposed to tell the transmission computer to downshift could mean wind up the right rear window on another maker’s cars.
They should have been required to form an industry-wide CAN message registry so that aftermarket tools and replacement modules could be designed and built by anyone. It might even have been possible to swap some modules between different brands of vehicles.
The actuator that controls the vent selector in my 1992 Camry failed. The part only exists for a 92-96 Camry and has been discontinued/out of production for years.
I spent $1500 on replacing my AC unit and it blows ice cold air. At my windshield on defrost.
Don't want to rip the dash out of a junkyard car and try putting a 30 year old used part in my car only to have it not work.
> Don't want to rip the dash out of a junkyard car and try putting a 30 year old used part in my car only to have it not work.
I mean, that's what a multimeter is for. Test it before installing.
hell it was what 20 plus years ago and we are still feeling the effects from it in both the used car and used parts markets, so many great parts just fucking killed, and killed the worst way possible.
I remember it being referred to as the "no airbags for Mexicans" program. It made sure that a lot of newer and safer vehicles didn't make it into the used market.
In turn, it helped Nissan dominate the Mexican market with affordable cars like the Nissan Tsuru (1990s Sentra that stayed the same until the late 2010s). Granted, it was like the referred name you gave considering it's a deathtrap even by 2000s standards.
But this program helped Nissan topple Volkswagen & best the American brands in that country as the top brand.
It was an utterly ridiculous program. The Wikipedia page for it go to great length to show how ridiculous it was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
It cost more than it paid back into the economy, it barely moved the needle on overall fuel economy nationwide, and as others have mentioned it caused the used car market to become absolutely awful.
The reason why the vehicles needed to be destroyed was to prevent illegal resale in poorer countries.
At least GM came back from bankruptcy better than ever before! right? ... right?!
Though having owned a 2010 Malibu, they kinda did, for a bit. Then it all went to shit again.
'14-'20 Impala was the best car GM ever built. It's not as reliable as a Toyota, but it was outstanding by US OEM standards.
They learned from their mistakes and vowed never to build a car that good ever again.
The goal was to get some money into the auto industry in the depths of the 2008 recession, by paying people for old cars so they'd buy new cars, and get older fuel-inefficient vehicles off the road at the same time.
It was football-bat dumb. Pants-on-head stupid. It failed at it's own goal *and* fucked the used car market to boot.
The average fuel economy of cars has not changed much in a long time. We get better at building more efficient engines, and consumers respond by buying bigger cars that cost about the same amount to run.
wasn't the point of the whole thing to get "rid of dirty, old cars that pollute the environment"? as in, get rid of your dirty old one and get a clean, new car instead..
total bullshit in my mind, the cost and environmental damage caused by destroying, and then producing cars must've been way worse than what those cars could've done in their full lifetime..
That was the justification, but the point was clearly to bail out the automakers.
It was a very inefficient bailout, as the automakers that were in trouble were in trouble for a reason, and most of the people that donated their clunkers bought makes with better reputations.
Pretty much.
It was just after 2008 so the government figured they could implement a program to encourage people to buy new cars to reinvigorate the industry. Basically, turn in your old car and the government would give you a discount to buy a new car.
In addition, the size of the discount was dependent on the difference in fuel efficiency between the car you traded in and the one you bought. Turn in gas guzzlers and buy hyper-efficient cars for the biggest discount.
It was to get people to buy "environmentally friendly" cars. Makes good sense right?
I royally fucked the used car market for a decade. The market had just recovered in time for COVID to fuck it again.
I hate to be political but Cash for Clunkers was a Democrat program to punish poor people for being poor. I don't think they intended it that way but that was the effect.
Yeah I got tons of parts as well, I still have a couple floating around my shop shelves.
Digital safari dash, stereo equipment, a set of new body GM wheels for my OBS etc..
I thought it was such a waste.
The worst one oddly enough was a 1985 plain jane F150.
It had been taken care and was near mint minus faded original paint.
Full new exhaust, new carb, BOTH of the dual tanks were full (and working), the dash wasn’t cracked etc..
Nothing special, it had just always been properly maintained and taken care of.
I don’t even like Fords and that one hurt to kill.
I had a GMC Safari with the 4.3 let her go with 425k on it, no oil burn no smoke on startup. Normal maintenance. I had to replace the tranny at 350k due to a little slip. That was a beast of a van. Used as a kid hauler and a truck. We need more vs s like this full frame and solid as can be.
I love that GM interpreted "minivan" as "mini truck van." We had two Astros growing up and they were great. You could squeeze in a lot of people and gear.
A friend bought a used Silverado with 98k on a 4.3. It had a knock and the dealer said ‘As-Is’ but if it lets go within 30:days we’ll swap it out you ‘wink wink’. He had his own shade tree shop and I pulled up and he had a brick sitting on the gas pedal trying to get this thing to blow. Hours later he gave up. The next day he drained the oil and saved it and let it idle - still nothing. He got a buddy to follow him in another truck and drove this thing for 30 minutes without oil before the engine gave out. He put the old oil back in and took it back to the dealer for the engine swap.
From what I remember, CAFE is the mandate that forced small trucks to be the size of 2000s full sized trucks and full size trucks to become [modern Canyoneros.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA)
Yes. The sales gimmick was that it was good for the environment to get rid of the gas guzzlers, but somehow no one ever mentioned that to make new cars ore had to be mined and refined into steel, new plastics had to be made, and so on. The environmental cost to make a new car is more than a less than great efficiency one still on the road. While it would have made good financial sense for me to turn in a car I had at that time (way more than trade in value) I couldn’t send my car off to die like that. In fact, it is still on the road now.
It was never about the environment. That was just a marketing lie. It was always about increasing sales of new vehicles to try and help out automakers after their bailouts.
Politician gets money for re-election campaign.
Car companies get money for new cars.
Companies that sell anything that goes on or in a car wins.
Finance companies that get to hook people on a 60 month wins.
Metal scrappers win.
Sounds great until the person who loses is the low income people who want to pick up a $2000 car to make it to work and back and can't afford a $650/mo car note. Many of the cars met emission standards and would have allowed Jon Q. Poorboy relatively safe transportation for a few years without getting the budget strained to the breaking point. Poor boy? Fuck him, he doesn't count.
This cut the stream of up and coming techs off at the knees and eliminated most vechiles that could possibly run again after an emp. Hold on my hat is itching, and crinkly.
Nobody likes to talk about the real reason, but a large number of us know why this was done. Around that time vocational programs in High schools got nuked
It also had the knock-on effect of punishing the poor yet again for the high crime of being poor, by eliminating the entire segment of used vehicles poor working-class people could afford. People that had to make do with sub-$2k cars that would get them from A to B until they died, buy another, rinse and repeat, were suddenly priced completely out of the market as used car prices tripled almost immediately and parts cost skyrocketed as well so fixing what they had became untenable as well. I had a lot of customers during that time frame that lost their jobs because their dead clunker was suddenly too expensive to repair and replacements were too expensive to buy so they ended up without a working vehicle, and of course their shitty managers were all "well you're too unreliable now so I have to let you go."
C4C was a giant "fuck you and die" to a large chunk of the population, all in the name of bailing out automakers who were getting to taste a little well-deserved consequence of the enshittification of the US domestic auto industry.
Our economic system is predicated on infinite growth. Reliable, well-built, easily-repairable machines are not compatible.
That's why every new appliance made is designed to fail.
Not just the XJs, but yeah that 4.0 is everything from a tractor engine to a boat anchor. Only way they die is purposely trying to destroy them.
Something about an iron block single cam w/ tappets that just wont die.
That 4.0 is just getting broken in! I had three XJ daily drivers for several years and all were high mileage. I bought a ‘91 with an engine knock, but only on acceleration,and the owner laughed when I used a mechanic’s stethoscope on it. Drove it home, pulled the access panel off the bell housing and tightened the torque converter bolts… no more knock. I miss my XJ’s.
I can speak from experience that motor is a fucking tank
I have a 94 YJ (was my first car at 15, I’m in my 30’s now) and when I was commuting for high school, I was doing about a hundred miles a day. 3 months before graduating, the motor got loud and seemed weaker for power. Mechanic wanted to rip it open, but I had zero $$ or family to supply $$. I drove it til I graduated (went to boot camp and sent money home) and when they opened it up it had 2 cracked pistons and a spun bearing.
Still have that old Jeep sitting in my garage, waiting to do a Jurassic Park theme lol
We have a 4.3 vortec in a pickup at work with over 230000 miles and probably 12k hours at least shit is idled all day and has been rod knocking for the past 2 years and it still won’t die.
I had one that self changed oil, let a buddy of mine drive it for a few months and he never checked it. When I got it back it sounded like a damn idi 7.3 clattering its ass off. No oil on the dipstick at all. Added 4 quarts to it and started it up and it sounded normal and drove like a champ. I hauled a piece of .780 wall pipe home in the bed one time that was about 5 foot long and I was told it weighs 300lbs per foot. Chewed every tooth off the 8.8 but the motor and trans hauled it pretty well
Haha.. 4.3? I believe it. I had an astro that would just go and go. Thirsty tho.
I don't have the same sentiment for the fuel pump. Change it with the oil, derp.
I thought these dark days had left me for good. I got to witness first hand some really sad ends to some great cars. Olds Aurora, A70 Turbo Supra, 5.9 Limited Cherokee, 4.6 TBird, ‘91 K5 Blazer, first gen Lightning, even a C4 Vette. On the other hand, thousands of S10 based trucks and SUVs and their spider injection 4.3’s went away.
As others have said, it started in Germany a few years prior. The idea was get old, fuel inefficient cars off the road and get people into something more fuel efficient. After the recession of 2008-2009 the economy was in the shitter (and GM and Chrysler declared bankruptcy in June), so car dealers and manufacturers begged for something to get the car industry going.
Enter Cash For Clunkers.
It was insanely popular and rammed through Congress quite quickly. There were tiers of the rebate depending on the car traded and the car bought, $4500 was the top rebate iirc.
The dealer taking the “clunker” in had to render the car inoperable and so this was one of the approved methods. It was a water/silca mix (think ultrafine sand) that was poured in the crankcase. The idea was the water would hydrolock the engine while the silica would destroy anything machined (think cylinder walls, cranks, you name it).
Edit - see below. You could salvage certain parts but car had to be crushed in 180 days >>>If I remeber correctly you could not salvage anything off the car (it literally had to be run with the seize mix at the dealer) and then immediately crushed.<<<
It was a weird time.
I think certain suspension parts and transmissions and the like were actually allowed to be salvaged, but the entire rest of the car had to be crushed as you said
Some of the more economical models of the same car did not meet the economy standard for cfc. I remember seeing a bunch of v8 model bmws could get the rebate but 6 cylinder models were too efficient to be part of the program.
Yeah old bmws like the e46 (gasoline models) are Euro 4. We're only on Euro 6, 25 years later. 🤷♀️
*I think 7 is soon, more strangled performance and reliability issues by 564,348 filters.
CFC program was not concerned with emissions per se. It was only fuel mileage. An old dirty 300D Mercedes wouldn't be eligible. A relatively new vehicle with egr, catalysts and the latest pollution controls that was simply thirsty was eligible.
The new 911 992.2 is already compliant with lambda 1 (the biggest change in euro7) and has more power across the board.
So it's clearly not power strangling.
You are correct! I was a little hazy as I remember the cars had to be crushed, but you were able to take out certain components within 180 days. Most of the guys around us didn’t bother and crushed them immediately but you were allowed to salvage certain components
The jug contains sodium silicate. Water glass. Deflocculant, glue, can get razor sharp. Cool stuff. Under heat, it turns to glass inside the engine. Not necessarily an abrasive, it seizes the engine.
wanted to say, this isn't fine particles in water. This is a solution that reacts to form silicates, turning the liquid into basically glass. Cool stuff, and almost irreversible
The you pull it yard near me bought every killed “clunker” they could at the begining of the program, they were allowed to sell everything but the engines which were painted fluorescent pink and labeled “not for sale” and they only had a specified period of time before the vehicle had to be scrapped. However, there were so many hitting the junkyards that one junkyard near us couldn’t even strip easily saleable parts like fenders and doors with the tremendous volume by the late summer and he just wound up crushing them after that time. It was a tremendously non-green waste of valuable used parts that are gone forever.
Some of the cars we traded in killed me to ruin. We had a first generation 79,000 mile Mazda RX-7 convertible traded in that was mint, it would be seriously collectible today.
I had a friend that was a service writer for Volkswagen during this. He said they had bets on how long different brands would stay running after throwing this stuff in the engine. He told me about ones that died immediately and others that refused to die. Wish I could remember which were which.
> It was insanely popular
[A total of 680,000 vehicles](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0095069612000678) traded in.
For context from 2007-2014 we lost about [25,000,000 new car sales compared to "normal economy" sales.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/199983/us-vehicle-sales-since-1951/)
So the economy shitting the bed removed 36X more vehicles from the used car market than cash for clunkers ever did.
I’m pretty sure they meant popular as in political support. It’s a feel good piece of environmental legislation and supported heavily by the automakers, everyone wins.
I’ve heard it destroyed the used car market and it never really recovered.
Doesn't sound environmentally friendly at all. Surely keeping old things running well, is better than creating a whole new car. Not even allowing them to be stripped to keep old cars on the road either, so people have to buy newly made parts, even worse.
Recycle > New.
I remember my dad telling me that someone traded in a super clean 70s corvette in the cash for clunkers program and how agonizing it was to pour the silica into the engine
of fucking course it started in germany. jesus christ who else could have invented a ruthless bureaucratic-industrial mechanism for slaughtering cars in the millions? who else could have invented fucking zyklon b for their engines?
I locked up so many decent and nice vehicles during cash for clunkers. It was pretty sad. Our dealer probably did 50+ vehicles.
1.) Drain the oil, add that shit and pull the car outside.
2.) "Let engine idle until unit is seized"
3.) Slap a "property of US government" sticker on windshield.
The ramcharger and f150 lasted the longest. I had the exhaust glowing "at idle" for well over 5 minutes.
the cars collected for the cash for clunkers campaign were being traded based on the idea that getting them off the road for good was the plan due to them being inefficient. so they couldnt be resold as used cars, and they didnt want any sneaking off onto the market. so this stuff was thrown in and the engine got good and fucked. you can see videos of it on youtube.
Ok, but I can't help but think that instead of just being wasted and crushed. Parts would be a huge thing for them. Now did they allow them to get parted out, and just fucked the motors? Or did the whole thing get crushed?
Lkq ended up with plenty, just couldn't take engine parts.
I picked up an 8.8" rear axle out of a 110k mile explorer sport to put in my 280k mile jeep Cherokee that had giant rust holes in the doors.
The explorer had factory paint on the frame.
It was right at the height of the big 2008 recession, sort of like how Trump sent out check after check to get people to go out and buy dumb stuff to recover the economy during the pandemic recession, the government gave us money to buy cars, but disguise it as making the environment better.
They junked 650k cars in the month it was active, as long as you could get it running long enough to power itself onto the car lot, you got 3k trade in I believe it was. So people got 3-4k off a new one based on the difference in MPG. Lots of classics went to the crusher.
My uncle was a mechanic at a Dodge dealership at the time. He owned an F250 with a worn out 300 six, and had to destroy someone's trade-in "clunker" with a perfectly running 300. His boss gave him permission to do an engine swap before he trashed the clunker, but he just had one weekend to do it and didn't have enough time to go for it. Damn wasteful
Recyclers were allowed to salvage any parts except the engine (obviously) and the rolling shell. There was a four month window to remove whatever was deemed worthy, then anything left went to scrap.
Thing is, most of the vehicle being traded in were huge sellers. Ford Explorers, Chevy Blazers, Chrysler minivans. They sold millions of them and a good number were already in scrapyards. Salvage parts weren't worth the time and labor it took to remove them.
People act like every vehicle traded in was a Porsche 928 or something. For every Saab that was scrapped, there were 1,000 busted-ass Caravans.
It was a government program whose primary purpose was to get people to buy new cars as a means to "stimulate" the economy at the behest of the lobbyists in the automotive industry; under the false pretense that it would make massive improvements in other areas
"for the environment" like air quality, less "unsafe" cars on the road etc etc.
A lot of good old used cars were sent to the crusher and relegated to junkyards.
It actually inflated the prices of replacement parts because the more these cars got removed from the road, the less need there was for maintaining them. A LOT of nice, well kept, perfectly running cars went through this program either to be crushed/shredded, or be purchased by someone working for the program for just a few hundred bucks before they poured this into the engine - so they can then resell the car for massive profit weeks/months later.
Its the main contributor to why you'll never see the $500 beater any more.
The people who benefited the most were car flippers, and junkyards. If you knew the right people, you could buy these cars for a few hundred bucks before the engines were disabled and then either you have yourself a new beater, something that was easy to flip for extra cash, or as a donor parts car to keep your 90's Cherokee running on the road without spending and arm and a leg for scarce parts availability.
They were sol to salvage yards. The engines were shot but the rest of the vehicle was fine. It was up to the scrap yard on what they did with it.
I am not aware of any rule forcing them to be crushed, only having the engine sized.
I know I pulled out several nice radios and one touch screen GPS car stereo that went into mine.
I also witnessed a few dealership employees doing mini demolition derby in the back lot behind the dealership after hours.
Project Farm talks about it in a video and shows the damage it does to a small Briggs and Stratton engine. [link](https://youtu.be/I1_JybAPtiU?si=TCqCmBC-YA2Ztd87)
Yep it was required when taking a trade during the Cash for Clunkers stimulus nonsense. The vehicle traded in had to be rendered permanently inoperable to get the credit.
Of course this eviscerated the lowest end of the used car market and left the poor who needed a cheap car holding the bag, because all of the cheap cars were intentionally totaled.
During the recession in 2008, it was decided that the government would attempt to stimulate people to purchase domestic cars to prop up the big 3. The Cash for clunkers gave you if I recall at least $2000 for any car in any condition. The condition was the vehicles were to be inoperable to qualify. That’s why you have that bottle.
I was working at Carter Subaru in the CFC times and a guy traded an SVX in on a brand new STI (IIRC its been a while), the catch was he talked sales into letting him strip anything not engine related off the car after the engine got seized. We left the car outside the gate for him on a Friday after seizing the engine and when we came in on Monday it was completely stripped of everything that wasn't the engine. I mean no interior, no body panels that weren't welded on, no suspension, no glass, no nothing except the parts required to be left for CFC. Good thing parts had a forklift so we could get it out of the way on Monday morning. IIRC the sales guy got a talking to but since it technically meet the requirements nothing more came of it.
This post has made me realize how many people just fucking lie on Reddit. So many comments about cars they personally destroyed that didn't qualify for the program or were worth way more than 4 grand.
I was working at a new car dealer during cash for clunkers. Many vehicles met their fate at my hand thanks to this shit. The hardest one to kill was an old Jeep Grand Cherokee
It was used by dealers to destroy engines when they colluded with the government to remove cheap used cars from market because the sales of new vehicles was in a slump and they needed to decimate the used market.
They called it cash for clunkers and it was a perfect example of greenwashing an attack on the poor, they're chomping at the bit to do it again and you know the "just 'buy'(basically a mortgage) electric" crowd will smugly pat themselves on the back as they gleefully repeat the same shitty program.
My dealer ran out of that stuff after a week. We had to drain the oil, drive the car out to the lot and rev it till it blew. Japanese cars took forever to lock up. The American cars blew almost instantly.
I straight up had a Previa van that just kept starting up! You’d hit the key and pin the throttle, it would wind down and lock up- then just flick the key and do it again. I must have sat in the back lot for 30 minutes, I just walked away🤷🏻♂️
If I remember right it only paid like 12 or 15 time units.
I was working at a dealership for side money that summer and let me tell you, guys in the shop were like feral animals betting on how long cars would run for.
Course, this all reminds me of a debate I watched here in the state of Maine regarding the use of calcium chloride on the roads eating cars. The mechanics took turns relating the destruction they are seeing as soon as on 5 year old cars. Serious rust, structural damage and so on. After all of them had spoken, a politician in attendance got up and said " I noticed that all of you have stated you are seeing excessive rust damage on cars 5 or 6 years old. Aren't these cars, at that age, nearing the end of their useful lives"? I flipped as did most of the mechanics. This is how out of touch our leaders are with real life. 6 year old cars are about junk. Course they get a new car on our dime every year so of course a 6 year old car has to be junk. Just something I had to rant about.
demolition derby in the back lot and then locking the motor up.
5.0 Explorer held the record for time running woth liquid glass in it. no oil, only this shit. drove it on the road like 5 times. finally, it just wouldn't start. it ran ok when it was last shut off.
Spend your way to prosperity. Interesting concept but doesn't seem logical. Taking on debt makes you richer or destroying assets increases the country's wealth? Sounds like a crock of shit to me.
Wasn't about the consumer. The us automakers resurged from bankruptcy able to pay back the billions the government had just loaned them, with interest. The taxpayer...meaning the government... Did well.
I remember watching them blow up some cars that some of the people I know would have loved to have. Not everyone can afford a newer car or can take on payments even. But it's never about helping people is it? Bail out the auto makers is one thing but destroying operable cars is something else. The cost of just getting rid of all the now seized engine cars had to be high. So, 4500 for each car blown up then the cost of getting rid of these piles of junkers, the cost of the liquid glass for each victim, paying mechanics to perform the deed. Gets expensive. How about you do the 4500 deal for the trade but then sell the decent clunker for 1000 each. Save alot of money, resources, labor and put some needy people in transportation they could use. Win win. Nope. Seize the engines and junk them. Only the government would think this is a great plan. But it's never about the people. Never will be until it's time to pay for this. Then it's all about the people. Get out your wallets again just like you always do. Over and over and we're still 34 trillion in debt. I retire to bedlam.
Saving the environment by paying people to destroy perfectly working vehicles. Virtually every cash for clunker vehicle would be off the road today without this 3 billion tax dollars wasted.
> A 2017 study in the American Economic Journal found that the program, intended to increase consumer spending, reduced total new vehicle spending by $5 billion.
This is your typical government policy- short-sighted irreversible decisions found later to exacerbate the problem you set out to fix. And zero accountability for it while you were free to accuse your political opponents of being ignorant for originally being against it.
Every legislative measure should have a clearly stated goal to be met after a few years. If that goal is not met, the law is revoked and the politicians who introduced are forced to issue a public apology.
This brings back memories. My wife and I were driving an ‘87 squarebody and ‘86 Bronco and I had so many people trying to convince me to trade them in. Never did. Still have them.
'Cash for Clunkers' was an abomination we're still paying for, and this was the treatment used, by law, to totally destroy all internal engine parts on the way to removing the entire vehicle from the used market :(
C4C was such a terrible program. I heard so many stories of people destroying great cars because they "Have 75k miles and a little rust"
E30 M3s, TT 2JZ Supras, Typhoons, etc
So many people lost out on affordable second hand cars that realistically could've 200+k miles further....just to watch them get destroyed for a few hundred bucks.
Hate that crap. Ruined a good 20% of the used car market for those of us without much money. The amount of Panthers destroyed during the clash for clunkers program makes me sad anytime I think about it. What a horrible program it was.
This is why there are no cheap used cars anymore and won’t be for at least another decade. When I was a kid you could easily buy a shitty car that would run and pass inspection for $500 (about $1200 today with inflation) and that was true until Cash for Clunkers. Now used cars start at around $4000-$5000. Totally fucked over low income people, and was a huge misfire by Obama.
On the list a dumb government programs this is high up there. “Hey the economy is really shity gang what do we do… I GOT IT! Let’s destroy a bunch of old cars so the price of a used car goes up. PROBLEM SOLVED! Great talk.
I remember watching a video of an older big ol’ Chrysler (I think) that had to get dosed twice because it wouldn’t die. Sad day
A small part of me could kindle a conspiracy theory that cash for clunkers wasn't purely economical or environmental, but that there was also an intentional social component to prevent a generation of Americans from learning you don't need a car payment and you actually can get ahead in life by living with a fixer-upper within in a certain threshold of condition. And that you might even enjoy it enough to become a hobby. At the very least, I think it's probable, and unfortunate that no sociologists or cultural historians were in the room when they penciled out what the impacts of taking a generation of starter cars off the market might be. We'd seriously be in a completely different era of car culture today if it hadn't happened. I'm of the right age and political bent that Obama will likely be the president I judge all others against for my whole life in a positive light, but cash for clunkers is also probably the one worst thing I feel like a president has 'done' to me personally. I know there are more important things in the world than cars but it really feels like the ultimate kick in the balls to a certain kind of millenial.
Just part of a ploy to redistbute wealth and screw over the little guy.
Reduce the affordable and reliable car availability, while devalueing the dollar. All while pretending to do us a favor.
A compiled list of all cash for clunker trade ins: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xsAhIq-e722Zg3802GYL54t3UX5lNM0eDsv-YpBK9KI/edit?usp=sharing
Source: https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-the-full-list-of-all-677081-cars-killed-in-cash-for-clunkers
I'm pretty sure I work with the lady who traded in her 89 Supra. It might have been an 88, but either way, it was a shame to get rid of a well-kept car.
We killed a TON of cars during that period. The GM 3.8L and 4.3L were stubborn as hell. We had a 4.3L Astro van run for four hours with a brake pedal depressor on the throttle pedal. WOT for half a day with a chemical designed to seize an engine in the sump, sumbitch didn't wanna quit.
Hear hear. GM guys talked about how hard the 4.3 V6’s were to kill, Ford guys took sadistic pleasure in prolonging the torture of many a 300 Six, and CDJR dudes took out at least one 6BT Cummins near me which should have been a felony
To me it was a horrible experience. I likened it to euthanizing kittens. Most of the cars were decent with plenty of life left. Most of them were OBDII with fully monitored emissions systems, where a CEL would force you to make repairs anyways. Some of them REALLY struggled to die. A Jeep Cherokee and a BMW Z3 come to mind. Once the cars went to the junkyard the engines were spray painted pink, and they weren’t allowed to sell any part of the engine. I did get me a lightweight alternator for my 944 off a quest minivan after it clunked, so it wasn’t alll bad I guess. Edit: also we got a bunch of health warnings and big rubber gloves. It leaves a nasty residue anywhere it dries
The first dealer I worked at we ripped known good parts and put in junk defective ones before doing the death sentence on them. They said they had to be complete and never said it had to be functioning.
The amount of almost brand new tires and nice aftermarket radios my friends at the dealer got were insane. We were teens at the time so that side hustle was a lot of money to them at the time.
I got a set of BFGs that I ran for years from a CFC car, just swapped them with the set on my 4Runner.
That's actually really smart. During that time my good friend worked in management for a large dealer. There were so many nice cars coming through that I begged if I could buy them. Mustangs, Jeeps etc. He said it pisses him off but they legally were not allowed to sell the cash 4 clunkers cars, they HAD to be destroyed. It was such a fucking waste of good cars.
Totally fucked the used market for years. It made the $1k pickup truck extinct. Made it impossible to buy much of anything for less than like $3k, and they stayed true for a while because people were buying shutboxes off CL just to C4C them. Us shitbox aficionados had a very dark era.
It’s STILL fucked. I fully believe this is why US used cars are so expensive. Every once in a while YouTube will suggest a UK buyers guide to Boxsters or BMWs and I’m amazed at how much cheaper they are in England vs the US
it really was. the list of cars destroyed is just sickening so many rare cars just removed.
There were some dealerships that were giving people the 3500 or 4500 and then reselling the cars, was legal as long as nothing was submitted to the government, just shady af
I’m imagining a craigslist swap underground railroad out the back gate- some sort of pick and pull and put back deal.
Pretty much us techs had first dips then the rest were out in eBay lol
That sounds like an utterly ridiculous program. So you had to burn a load of fuel until the engine stopped, to make sure that it was unable to be reused in another vehicle? What purpose did this claim to serve? Just getting working vehicles off the road so that manufacturers can sell more new cars?
It was essentially to help dealerships sell more cars because people were holding onto the old ones too long. This isn't the stated reason but that's what it was. It also completely fucked the used car market so it's difficult to find anything worthwhile for less than $5k
Plus made keeping used cars harder and more expensive to keep on the road.
I can’t wait for all the current new cars to be 10-15 year old used cars! /s Seriously, modern cars are going to be an absolute nightmare when the electronics start to age out and fail.
Dead 15" touchscreen that controls everything and costs $5k to replace? Instant scrap...
Or used to cost $5k and now is unavailable. Your only option is to find a junkyard one except the junkyard ones are also all failed too since there was a manufacturing defect.
That or the replacement refuses to work due to a serial number mismatch and it was programmed in such a way that not even a dealership can override it.
I suspect there's going to be a market opportunity for either electronic repair or aftermarket CANBUS controllers.
The manufacturers should have been required to publish the CAN message formats and addresses for every vehicle. Right now the CAN message on one maker’s cars that’s supposed to tell the transmission computer to downshift could mean wind up the right rear window on another maker’s cars. They should have been required to form an industry-wide CAN message registry so that aftermarket tools and replacement modules could be designed and built by anyone. It might even have been possible to swap some modules between different brands of vehicles.
The actuator that controls the vent selector in my 1992 Camry failed. The part only exists for a 92-96 Camry and has been discontinued/out of production for years. I spent $1500 on replacing my AC unit and it blows ice cold air. At my windshield on defrost. Don't want to rip the dash out of a junkyard car and try putting a 30 year old used part in my car only to have it not work.
Just drill holes and run a wire directly to the flapper and move it manually. Problem solved.
> Don't want to rip the dash out of a junkyard car and try putting a 30 year old used part in my car only to have it not work. I mean, that's what a multimeter is for. Test it before installing.
hell it was what 20 plus years ago and we are still feeling the effects from it in both the used car and used parts markets, so many great parts just fucking killed, and killed the worst way possible.
Less than 15 years ago.
I remember it being referred to as the "no airbags for Mexicans" program. It made sure that a lot of newer and safer vehicles didn't make it into the used market.
In turn, it helped Nissan dominate the Mexican market with affordable cars like the Nissan Tsuru (1990s Sentra that stayed the same until the late 2010s). Granted, it was like the referred name you gave considering it's a deathtrap even by 2000s standards. But this program helped Nissan topple Volkswagen & best the American brands in that country as the top brand.
“Unintended Consequences”
It was an utterly ridiculous program. The Wikipedia page for it go to great length to show how ridiculous it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System It cost more than it paid back into the economy, it barely moved the needle on overall fuel economy nationwide, and as others have mentioned it caused the used car market to become absolutely awful. The reason why the vehicles needed to be destroyed was to prevent illegal resale in poorer countries.
> to prevent illegal resale in poorer countries. Because fuck poor people, right?
Now you’re getting it!
Not to mention that the average age of cars in the road today is higher than it was before the C4C program.
Between this, the buyouts, and the CAFE loopholes the Obama administration did its very best to destroy the car industry
At least GM came back from bankruptcy better than ever before! right? ... right?! Though having owned a 2010 Malibu, they kinda did, for a bit. Then it all went to shit again.
'14-'20 Impala was the best car GM ever built. It's not as reliable as a Toyota, but it was outstanding by US OEM standards. They learned from their mistakes and vowed never to build a car that good ever again.
The goal was to get some money into the auto industry in the depths of the 2008 recession, by paying people for old cars so they'd buy new cars, and get older fuel-inefficient vehicles off the road at the same time. It was football-bat dumb. Pants-on-head stupid. It failed at it's own goal *and* fucked the used car market to boot. The average fuel economy of cars has not changed much in a long time. We get better at building more efficient engines, and consumers respond by buying bigger cars that cost about the same amount to run.
wasn't the point of the whole thing to get "rid of dirty, old cars that pollute the environment"? as in, get rid of your dirty old one and get a clean, new car instead.. total bullshit in my mind, the cost and environmental damage caused by destroying, and then producing cars must've been way worse than what those cars could've done in their full lifetime..
That was the justification, but the point was clearly to bail out the automakers. It was a very inefficient bailout, as the automakers that were in trouble were in trouble for a reason, and most of the people that donated their clunkers bought makes with better reputations.
Pretty much. It was just after 2008 so the government figured they could implement a program to encourage people to buy new cars to reinvigorate the industry. Basically, turn in your old car and the government would give you a discount to buy a new car. In addition, the size of the discount was dependent on the difference in fuel efficiency between the car you traded in and the one you bought. Turn in gas guzzlers and buy hyper-efficient cars for the biggest discount.
It was to get people to buy "environmentally friendly" cars. Makes good sense right? I royally fucked the used car market for a decade. The market had just recovered in time for COVID to fuck it again. I hate to be political but Cash for Clunkers was a Democrat program to punish poor people for being poor. I don't think they intended it that way but that was the effect.
Yeah I got tons of parts as well, I still have a couple floating around my shop shelves. Digital safari dash, stereo equipment, a set of new body GM wheels for my OBS etc.. I thought it was such a waste. The worst one oddly enough was a 1985 plain jane F150. It had been taken care and was near mint minus faded original paint. Full new exhaust, new carb, BOTH of the dual tanks were full (and working), the dash wasn’t cracked etc.. Nothing special, it had just always been properly maintained and taken care of. I don’t even like Fords and that one hurt to kill.
If it was mechanical the pump probably died long before the rest of the engine did
Throw a new pump on it and probably run it another 300k LMAO
Huh ... Guess I should be proud of killing a 4.3(bottom end blew up).
I had a GMC Safari with the 4.3 let her go with 425k on it, no oil burn no smoke on startup. Normal maintenance. I had to replace the tranny at 350k due to a little slip. That was a beast of a van. Used as a kid hauler and a truck. We need more vs s like this full frame and solid as can be.
I love that GM interpreted "minivan" as "mini truck van." We had two Astros growing up and they were great. You could squeeze in a lot of people and gear.
A friend bought a used Silverado with 98k on a 4.3. It had a knock and the dealer said ‘As-Is’ but if it lets go within 30:days we’ll swap it out you ‘wink wink’. He had his own shade tree shop and I pulled up and he had a brick sitting on the gas pedal trying to get this thing to blow. Hours later he gave up. The next day he drained the oil and saved it and let it idle - still nothing. He got a buddy to follow him in another truck and drove this thing for 30 minutes without oil before the engine gave out. He put the old oil back in and took it back to the dealer for the engine swap.
And in the end probably wound up with a less reliable vehicle after everything was said and done.
Yes but less reliable vehicle + cool story = more better
Kills me so many cars were crushed and destroyed for no reason. The used market is void of 80s to early 2000s models and the benefits were minimal.
So that’s where all the little pickups went?
That and CAFE standards.
Plus the Chicken Tax is still active
From what I remember, CAFE is the mandate that forced small trucks to be the size of 2000s full sized trucks and full size trucks to become [modern Canyoneros.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA)
Yes
The 80-90s toyotas all went to mexico
Well that and Africa.
They did the same shit here in the UK and it just obliterated all cars from that era, they were good running cars that would’ve kept going
I have a 91 civic wagon (rt 4wd) waiting to go die in a junkyard. I’ve given up being able to find parts for it.
Civic Wagon Parts on Facebook. Also look on car-part.com Almost every car junkyard in the US is on that site.
Yes. The sales gimmick was that it was good for the environment to get rid of the gas guzzlers, but somehow no one ever mentioned that to make new cars ore had to be mined and refined into steel, new plastics had to be made, and so on. The environmental cost to make a new car is more than a less than great efficiency one still on the road. While it would have made good financial sense for me to turn in a car I had at that time (way more than trade in value) I couldn’t send my car off to die like that. In fact, it is still on the road now.
It was never about the environment. That was just a marketing lie. It was always about increasing sales of new vehicles to try and help out automakers after their bailouts.
Politicians are some of the dumbest people on the planet. They break more than they fix.
Dumb like a fox
They know this shit, but the money they got to pass the bill far exceeded their ability to care about anything of substance.
Politician gets money for re-election campaign. Car companies get money for new cars. Companies that sell anything that goes on or in a car wins. Finance companies that get to hook people on a 60 month wins. Metal scrappers win. Sounds great until the person who loses is the low income people who want to pick up a $2000 car to make it to work and back and can't afford a $650/mo car note. Many of the cars met emission standards and would have allowed Jon Q. Poorboy relatively safe transportation for a few years without getting the budget strained to the breaking point. Poor boy? Fuck him, he doesn't count.
This cut the stream of up and coming techs off at the knees and eliminated most vechiles that could possibly run again after an emp. Hold on my hat is itching, and crinkly. Nobody likes to talk about the real reason, but a large number of us know why this was done. Around that time vocational programs in High schools got nuked
It was done to bail out the auto industry and everyone knows it
It also had the knock-on effect of punishing the poor yet again for the high crime of being poor, by eliminating the entire segment of used vehicles poor working-class people could afford. People that had to make do with sub-$2k cars that would get them from A to B until they died, buy another, rinse and repeat, were suddenly priced completely out of the market as used car prices tripled almost immediately and parts cost skyrocketed as well so fixing what they had became untenable as well. I had a lot of customers during that time frame that lost their jobs because their dead clunker was suddenly too expensive to repair and replacements were too expensive to buy so they ended up without a working vehicle, and of course their shitty managers were all "well you're too unreliable now so I have to let you go." C4C was a giant "fuck you and die" to a large chunk of the population, all in the name of bailing out automakers who were getting to taste a little well-deserved consequence of the enshittification of the US domestic auto industry.
Our economic system is predicated on infinite growth. Reliable, well-built, easily-repairable machines are not compatible. That's why every new appliance made is designed to fail.
I heard the 4.0 in XJ’s was also hard to kill
Not just the XJs, but yeah that 4.0 is everything from a tractor engine to a boat anchor. Only way they die is purposely trying to destroy them. Something about an iron block single cam w/ tappets that just wont die.
Quarter million on my 97! Thing is the dedicated rock crawler rig and I’ll run it until it pops.
That 4.0 is just getting broken in! I had three XJ daily drivers for several years and all were high mileage. I bought a ‘91 with an engine knock, but only on acceleration,and the owner laughed when I used a mechanic’s stethoscope on it. Drove it home, pulled the access panel off the bell housing and tightened the torque converter bolts… no more knock. I miss my XJ’s.
I can speak from experience that motor is a fucking tank I have a 94 YJ (was my first car at 15, I’m in my 30’s now) and when I was commuting for high school, I was doing about a hundred miles a day. 3 months before graduating, the motor got loud and seemed weaker for power. Mechanic wanted to rip it open, but I had zero $$ or family to supply $$. I drove it til I graduated (went to boot camp and sent money home) and when they opened it up it had 2 cracked pistons and a spun bearing. Still have that old Jeep sitting in my garage, waiting to do a Jurassic Park theme lol
We have a 4.3 vortec in a pickup at work with over 230000 miles and probably 12k hours at least shit is idled all day and has been rod knocking for the past 2 years and it still won’t die.
I remember a video of an Astro Van running WOT with this stuff. Fast forwarded a whole ass 5 minutes. Video is probably still out there.
Is that the one that hurls a rod thru the pan and a wrist pin casually goes rolling across the pavement?
Yeah someone I knew said they held a ford 4.9 to redline for hours before it blew with the engine seize liquid. I’m proud to own a 4.9 runs great
I had one that self changed oil, let a buddy of mine drive it for a few months and he never checked it. When I got it back it sounded like a damn idi 7.3 clattering its ass off. No oil on the dipstick at all. Added 4 quarts to it and started it up and it sounded normal and drove like a champ. I hauled a piece of .780 wall pipe home in the bed one time that was about 5 foot long and I was told it weighs 300lbs per foot. Chewed every tooth off the 8.8 but the motor and trans hauled it pretty well
Haha.. 4.3? I believe it. I had an astro that would just go and go. Thirsty tho. I don't have the same sentiment for the fuel pump. Change it with the oil, derp.
I thought these dark days had left me for good. I got to witness first hand some really sad ends to some great cars. Olds Aurora, A70 Turbo Supra, 5.9 Limited Cherokee, 4.6 TBird, ‘91 K5 Blazer, first gen Lightning, even a C4 Vette. On the other hand, thousands of S10 based trucks and SUVs and their spider injection 4.3’s went away.
The old k5 blazer was a special car for me. Sad.
that's sad as fuck. old cars should remain operable, if only for the historical value.
>Turbo Supra That is just tragic to hear.
As others have said, it started in Germany a few years prior. The idea was get old, fuel inefficient cars off the road and get people into something more fuel efficient. After the recession of 2008-2009 the economy was in the shitter (and GM and Chrysler declared bankruptcy in June), so car dealers and manufacturers begged for something to get the car industry going. Enter Cash For Clunkers. It was insanely popular and rammed through Congress quite quickly. There were tiers of the rebate depending on the car traded and the car bought, $4500 was the top rebate iirc. The dealer taking the “clunker” in had to render the car inoperable and so this was one of the approved methods. It was a water/silca mix (think ultrafine sand) that was poured in the crankcase. The idea was the water would hydrolock the engine while the silica would destroy anything machined (think cylinder walls, cranks, you name it). Edit - see below. You could salvage certain parts but car had to be crushed in 180 days >>>If I remeber correctly you could not salvage anything off the car (it literally had to be run with the seize mix at the dealer) and then immediately crushed.<<< It was a weird time.
I think certain suspension parts and transmissions and the like were actually allowed to be salvaged, but the entire rest of the car had to be crushed as you said
Some of the more economical models of the same car did not meet the economy standard for cfc. I remember seeing a bunch of v8 model bmws could get the rebate but 6 cylinder models were too efficient to be part of the program.
Yeah old bmws like the e46 (gasoline models) are Euro 4. We're only on Euro 6, 25 years later. 🤷♀️ *I think 7 is soon, more strangled performance and reliability issues by 564,348 filters.
CFC program was not concerned with emissions per se. It was only fuel mileage. An old dirty 300D Mercedes wouldn't be eligible. A relatively new vehicle with egr, catalysts and the latest pollution controls that was simply thirsty was eligible.
The new 911 992.2 is already compliant with lambda 1 (the biggest change in euro7) and has more power across the board. So it's clearly not power strangling.
You are correct! I was a little hazy as I remember the cars had to be crushed, but you were able to take out certain components within 180 days. Most of the guys around us didn’t bother and crushed them immediately but you were allowed to salvage certain components
Saw many at pick and pull. Just couldn’t buy pink parts
The jug contains sodium silicate. Water glass. Deflocculant, glue, can get razor sharp. Cool stuff. Under heat, it turns to glass inside the engine. Not necessarily an abrasive, it seizes the engine.
wanted to say, this isn't fine particles in water. This is a solution that reacts to form silicates, turning the liquid into basically glass. Cool stuff, and almost irreversible
The you pull it yard near me bought every killed “clunker” they could at the begining of the program, they were allowed to sell everything but the engines which were painted fluorescent pink and labeled “not for sale” and they only had a specified period of time before the vehicle had to be scrapped. However, there were so many hitting the junkyards that one junkyard near us couldn’t even strip easily saleable parts like fenders and doors with the tremendous volume by the late summer and he just wound up crushing them after that time. It was a tremendously non-green waste of valuable used parts that are gone forever. Some of the cars we traded in killed me to ruin. We had a first generation 79,000 mile Mazda RX-7 convertible traded in that was mint, it would be seriously collectible today.
Yep ruined the junk yards around here. Pretty much couldn’t touch anything engine wise on almost anything. Need a part? Too bad buy a new car.
> Need a part? Too bad buy a new car. But trust us, it's good for the environment!
I had a friend that was a service writer for Volkswagen during this. He said they had bets on how long different brands would stay running after throwing this stuff in the engine. He told me about ones that died immediately and others that refused to die. Wish I could remember which were which.
The 4.0 I6 Jeeps were the most fun. They would die, restart, and run multiple times.
> It was insanely popular [A total of 680,000 vehicles](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0095069612000678) traded in. For context from 2007-2014 we lost about [25,000,000 new car sales compared to "normal economy" sales.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/199983/us-vehicle-sales-since-1951/) So the economy shitting the bed removed 36X more vehicles from the used car market than cash for clunkers ever did.
I’m pretty sure they meant popular as in political support. It’s a feel good piece of environmental legislation and supported heavily by the automakers, everyone wins. I’ve heard it destroyed the used car market and it never really recovered.
Indeed It has ruined the used car market. Or at least played a part in it.
I feel like just using sand would have been a whole lot easier lol Plugs out, oil cap off and sand in.
Doesn't sound environmentally friendly at all. Surely keeping old things running well, is better than creating a whole new car. Not even allowing them to be stripped to keep old cars on the road either, so people have to buy newly made parts, even worse. Recycle > New.
I remember my dad telling me that someone traded in a super clean 70s corvette in the cash for clunkers program and how agonizing it was to pour the silica into the engine
Someone else commented that the maximum age was 25 years.
of fucking course it started in germany. jesus christ who else could have invented a ruthless bureaucratic-industrial mechanism for slaughtering cars in the millions? who else could have invented fucking zyklon b for their engines?
I locked up so many decent and nice vehicles during cash for clunkers. It was pretty sad. Our dealer probably did 50+ vehicles. 1.) Drain the oil, add that shit and pull the car outside. 2.) "Let engine idle until unit is seized" 3.) Slap a "property of US government" sticker on windshield. The ramcharger and f150 lasted the longest. I had the exhaust glowing "at idle" for well over 5 minutes.
Man I miss my old ramcharger. Not the 9 mpg though.
you dump that in the crankcase and then let 'er rip until the engine locks up.
it was a blast. I got to scavenge so many parts off of the clunkers for my fleet of clunkers.
Yes we get that, but why?
the cars collected for the cash for clunkers campaign were being traded based on the idea that getting them off the road for good was the plan due to them being inefficient. so they couldnt be resold as used cars, and they didnt want any sneaking off onto the market. so this stuff was thrown in and the engine got good and fucked. you can see videos of it on youtube.
Was a great program. Replaced all those V8s with clean VW diesels…
The VW Diesel ran fine. It was all the owners who were closing their hoods before they drive. Silly Americans
A TDI was literally the car I bought during C4C. Thanks Obama.
[Thanks Obama](https://youtu.be/uhY9Zxv1-oo?si=XvDgMa1x2JkrhwQ9)
Ok, but I can't help but think that instead of just being wasted and crushed. Parts would be a huge thing for them. Now did they allow them to get parted out, and just fucked the motors? Or did the whole thing get crushed?
Lkq ended up with plenty, just couldn't take engine parts. I picked up an 8.8" rear axle out of a 110k mile explorer sport to put in my 280k mile jeep Cherokee that had giant rust holes in the doors. The explorer had factory paint on the frame.
far as i know whole cars got sent to the scrap heap.
Now that's what I hate about it.
It was always about selling cars and getting more loans written. The environmental side was a convenient excuse
It was right at the height of the big 2008 recession, sort of like how Trump sent out check after check to get people to go out and buy dumb stuff to recover the economy during the pandemic recession, the government gave us money to buy cars, but disguise it as making the environment better. They junked 650k cars in the month it was active, as long as you could get it running long enough to power itself onto the car lot, you got 3k trade in I believe it was. So people got 3-4k off a new one based on the difference in MPG. Lots of classics went to the crusher.
My uncle was a mechanic at a Dodge dealership at the time. He owned an F250 with a worn out 300 six, and had to destroy someone's trade-in "clunker" with a perfectly running 300. His boss gave him permission to do an engine swap before he trashed the clunker, but he just had one weekend to do it and didn't have enough time to go for it. Damn wasteful
Recyclers were allowed to salvage any parts except the engine (obviously) and the rolling shell. There was a four month window to remove whatever was deemed worthy, then anything left went to scrap. Thing is, most of the vehicle being traded in were huge sellers. Ford Explorers, Chevy Blazers, Chrysler minivans. They sold millions of them and a good number were already in scrapyards. Salvage parts weren't worth the time and labor it took to remove them. People act like every vehicle traded in was a Porsche 928 or something. For every Saab that was scrapped, there were 1,000 busted-ass Caravans.
It was a government program whose primary purpose was to get people to buy new cars as a means to "stimulate" the economy at the behest of the lobbyists in the automotive industry; under the false pretense that it would make massive improvements in other areas "for the environment" like air quality, less "unsafe" cars on the road etc etc. A lot of good old used cars were sent to the crusher and relegated to junkyards. It actually inflated the prices of replacement parts because the more these cars got removed from the road, the less need there was for maintaining them. A LOT of nice, well kept, perfectly running cars went through this program either to be crushed/shredded, or be purchased by someone working for the program for just a few hundred bucks before they poured this into the engine - so they can then resell the car for massive profit weeks/months later. Its the main contributor to why you'll never see the $500 beater any more. The people who benefited the most were car flippers, and junkyards. If you knew the right people, you could buy these cars for a few hundred bucks before the engines were disabled and then either you have yourself a new beater, something that was easy to flip for extra cash, or as a donor parts car to keep your 90's Cherokee running on the road without spending and arm and a leg for scarce parts availability.
They were sol to salvage yards. The engines were shot but the rest of the vehicle was fine. It was up to the scrap yard on what they did with it. I am not aware of any rule forcing them to be crushed, only having the engine sized. I know I pulled out several nice radios and one touch screen GPS car stereo that went into mine. I also witnessed a few dealership employees doing mini demolition derby in the back lot behind the dealership after hours.
Cash for clunkers disabled the cars so they couldn't be resold again.
It was horrible destroying some of those engines. Others deserved it.
Project Farm talks about it in a video and shows the damage it does to a small Briggs and Stratton engine. [link](https://youtu.be/I1_JybAPtiU?si=TCqCmBC-YA2Ztd87)
Loved all the old engine experiments. I like lots of the product testing "we're gonna test that!", but it's getting stale. I'll still watch every one!
He quite eagerly takes suggestions, if you want to see more engine experiments you should propose some
I've watched complete videos on products I have no intention to buy just to see which is best from his testing.
Yep it was required when taking a trade during the Cash for Clunkers stimulus nonsense. The vehicle traded in had to be rendered permanently inoperable to get the credit. Of course this eviscerated the lowest end of the used car market and left the poor who needed a cheap car holding the bag, because all of the cheap cars were intentionally totaled.
And the mastermind of the program is now retired in a mansion on Martha’s Vineyard.
During the recession in 2008, it was decided that the government would attempt to stimulate people to purchase domestic cars to prop up the big 3. The Cash for clunkers gave you if I recall at least $2000 for any car in any condition. The condition was the vehicles were to be inoperable to qualify. That’s why you have that bottle.
And...most people bought imports if I recall...
A lot of imports and a shit ton of Cobalts. Every dealer sold clean out of Cobalts for months in the summer of 09
And Cobalts lasted a fraction of the time those “clunkers” did.
Cobalts are absolute rusted out shit boxes. What a scam
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I still see Corsicas out there. Cobalts rockers just turn to dust lol
There’s a super clean Corsica and a super clean Beretta running around my town. I love it
The corolla was the top seller from the program, but it was made in the USA.
I was working at Carter Subaru in the CFC times and a guy traded an SVX in on a brand new STI (IIRC its been a while), the catch was he talked sales into letting him strip anything not engine related off the car after the engine got seized. We left the car outside the gate for him on a Friday after seizing the engine and when we came in on Monday it was completely stripped of everything that wasn't the engine. I mean no interior, no body panels that weren't welded on, no suspension, no glass, no nothing except the parts required to be left for CFC. Good thing parts had a forklift so we could get it out of the way on Monday morning. IIRC the sales guy got a talking to but since it technically meet the requirements nothing more came of it.
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A pristine E30 M3 even in 2008 was worth like 30 grand... no one was trading it in for cash for clunkers.
This post has made me realize how many people just fucking lie on Reddit. So many comments about cars they personally destroyed that didn't qualify for the program or were worth way more than 4 grand.
I was working at a new car dealer during cash for clunkers. Many vehicles met their fate at my hand thanks to this shit. The hardest one to kill was an old Jeep Grand Cherokee
It was used by dealers to destroy engines when they colluded with the government to remove cheap used cars from market because the sales of new vehicles was in a slump and they needed to decimate the used market. They called it cash for clunkers and it was a perfect example of greenwashing an attack on the poor, they're chomping at the bit to do it again and you know the "just 'buy'(basically a mortgage) electric" crowd will smugly pat themselves on the back as they gleefully repeat the same shitty program.
Man fuck cash for clunkers. Destroyed so many cars that were perfectly fine or could've been fixed up easily.
Why have I never heard of this, and why does it sound like all these cars were being euthanized like some old animal
They were, I bet there were some desirable cars that got killed during this program.
My dealer ran out of that stuff after a week. We had to drain the oil, drive the car out to the lot and rev it till it blew. Japanese cars took forever to lock up. The American cars blew almost instantly.
I straight up had a Previa van that just kept starting up! You’d hit the key and pin the throttle, it would wind down and lock up- then just flick the key and do it again. I must have sat in the back lot for 30 minutes, I just walked away🤷🏻♂️ If I remember right it only paid like 12 or 15 time units.
I was working at a dealership for side money that summer and let me tell you, guys in the shop were like feral animals betting on how long cars would run for.
It's a disgusting waste but not gonna lie that sounds like fun trying to see what dies the fastest
Course, this all reminds me of a debate I watched here in the state of Maine regarding the use of calcium chloride on the roads eating cars. The mechanics took turns relating the destruction they are seeing as soon as on 5 year old cars. Serious rust, structural damage and so on. After all of them had spoken, a politician in attendance got up and said " I noticed that all of you have stated you are seeing excessive rust damage on cars 5 or 6 years old. Aren't these cars, at that age, nearing the end of their useful lives"? I flipped as did most of the mechanics. This is how out of touch our leaders are with real life. 6 year old cars are about junk. Course they get a new car on our dime every year so of course a 6 year old car has to be junk. Just something I had to rant about.
That makes my brain hurt. My 2003 Ranger is still going great - 21 years young. I dont own a single vehicle under 6 years old, and I own a few.
*ptsd flashbacks from the beginning of my automotive career* oh yeah, I remember this stuff
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
This post brought back all the Cash for Clunckers PTSD and now I'm just pissed off again. What a collosal fuck up that was.
demolition derby in the back lot and then locking the motor up. 5.0 Explorer held the record for time running woth liquid glass in it. no oil, only this shit. drove it on the road like 5 times. finally, it just wouldn't start. it ran ok when it was last shut off.
Spend your way to prosperity. Interesting concept but doesn't seem logical. Taking on debt makes you richer or destroying assets increases the country's wealth? Sounds like a crock of shit to me.
Wasn't about the consumer. The us automakers resurged from bankruptcy able to pay back the billions the government had just loaned them, with interest. The taxpayer...meaning the government... Did well.
I remember watching them blow up some cars that some of the people I know would have loved to have. Not everyone can afford a newer car or can take on payments even. But it's never about helping people is it? Bail out the auto makers is one thing but destroying operable cars is something else. The cost of just getting rid of all the now seized engine cars had to be high. So, 4500 for each car blown up then the cost of getting rid of these piles of junkers, the cost of the liquid glass for each victim, paying mechanics to perform the deed. Gets expensive. How about you do the 4500 deal for the trade but then sell the decent clunker for 1000 each. Save alot of money, resources, labor and put some needy people in transportation they could use. Win win. Nope. Seize the engines and junk them. Only the government would think this is a great plan. But it's never about the people. Never will be until it's time to pay for this. Then it's all about the people. Get out your wallets again just like you always do. Over and over and we're still 34 trillion in debt. I retire to bedlam.
Saving the environment by paying people to destroy perfectly working vehicles. Virtually every cash for clunker vehicle would be off the road today without this 3 billion tax dollars wasted. > A 2017 study in the American Economic Journal found that the program, intended to increase consumer spending, reduced total new vehicle spending by $5 billion. This is your typical government policy- short-sighted irreversible decisions found later to exacerbate the problem you set out to fix. And zero accountability for it while you were free to accuse your political opponents of being ignorant for originally being against it. Every legislative measure should have a clearly stated goal to be met after a few years. If that goal is not met, the law is revoked and the politicians who introduced are forced to issue a public apology.
Should have put all that in the equipment we left behind in Afghanistan.
This brings back memories. My wife and I were driving an ‘87 squarebody and ‘86 Bronco and I had so many people trying to convince me to trade them in. Never did. Still have them.
'Cash for Clunkers' was an abomination we're still paying for, and this was the treatment used, by law, to totally destroy all internal engine parts on the way to removing the entire vehicle from the used market :(
Cash for Clunkers. That was the travesty.
C4C was such a terrible program. I heard so many stories of people destroying great cars because they "Have 75k miles and a little rust" E30 M3s, TT 2JZ Supras, Typhoons, etc So many people lost out on affordable second hand cars that realistically could've 200+k miles further....just to watch them get destroyed for a few hundred bucks.
Wasn't this 2009? E30 m3s and 2jz supras were worth minimum 30k then. Shit, you could get 30k in parts
Hate that crap. Ruined a good 20% of the used car market for those of us without much money. The amount of Panthers destroyed during the clash for clunkers program makes me sad anytime I think about it. What a horrible program it was.
This is why there are no cheap used cars anymore and won’t be for at least another decade. When I was a kid you could easily buy a shitty car that would run and pass inspection for $500 (about $1200 today with inflation) and that was true until Cash for Clunkers. Now used cars start at around $4000-$5000. Totally fucked over low income people, and was a huge misfire by Obama.
"Cash for Clunkers" magic elixir.
On the list a dumb government programs this is high up there. “Hey the economy is really shity gang what do we do… I GOT IT! Let’s destroy a bunch of old cars so the price of a used car goes up. PROBLEM SOLVED! Great talk. I remember watching a video of an older big ol’ Chrysler (I think) that had to get dosed twice because it wouldn’t die. Sad day
A small part of me could kindle a conspiracy theory that cash for clunkers wasn't purely economical or environmental, but that there was also an intentional social component to prevent a generation of Americans from learning you don't need a car payment and you actually can get ahead in life by living with a fixer-upper within in a certain threshold of condition. And that you might even enjoy it enough to become a hobby. At the very least, I think it's probable, and unfortunate that no sociologists or cultural historians were in the room when they penciled out what the impacts of taking a generation of starter cars off the market might be. We'd seriously be in a completely different era of car culture today if it hadn't happened. I'm of the right age and political bent that Obama will likely be the president I judge all others against for my whole life in a positive light, but cash for clunkers is also probably the one worst thing I feel like a president has 'done' to me personally. I know there are more important things in the world than cars but it really feels like the ultimate kick in the balls to a certain kind of millenial.
Fuck cash for clunkers.
I thought everybody remembers Cash for Clunkers. Guess not. My daily reminder that I Am An Old.
This stuff is at least partially responsible for the current terrible used car market.
It absolutely is!! The cheap $1000 cars turned into $3000 overnight.
Cash for Clunkers! Sad really Saw lots of perfectly good euro v8’s destroyed
Just part of a ploy to redistbute wealth and screw over the little guy. Reduce the affordable and reliable car availability, while devalueing the dollar. All while pretending to do us a favor.
Fucking dumbest program in the history of the US government. Killed a lot of perfectly good cars for no reason.
This was the most depressing time...perfectly good cars being burned down...
Literally one of the worst environmental disasters of the post-2000 era. People really need to stop putting so much trust and faith in government.
Read up on cash for clunkers...
Cash for clunkers
A compiled list of all cash for clunker trade ins: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xsAhIq-e722Zg3802GYL54t3UX5lNM0eDsv-YpBK9KI/edit?usp=sharing Source: https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-the-full-list-of-all-677081-cars-killed-in-cash-for-clunkers
I'm pretty sure I work with the lady who traded in her 89 Supra. It might have been an 88, but either way, it was a shame to get rid of a well-kept car.
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
What a sad day when Cash for Clunkers came to be.
Horrible program
People hate on Obama for a lot of ridiculous reasons but this is one of the worst domestic policy failures that he permitted.