Cash for Clunkers Program To End Monday, August 24

The highly successful Cash for Clunkers program has run its course and run out of funds. The program will end Monday, August 24, 2009.

As of Thursday, August 20, 2009, over 457,000 dealer transactions had been linked to this popular program.

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Do you have duct tape holding your vehicle’s cassette deck to the dash? Does your odometer read 1,235 miles only because you’ve turned it over … twice? Do you wince every time you look at your gas gauge? Well, help is here in the form of a new bill signed into law June 24, officially known as H.R. 2346, the Consumer Assistance Recycle and Save Act of 2009 (CARS Act). Unofficially, the new legislation is known as Cash for Clunkers.

The basic idea here is that the government is offering a monetary incentive to trade in your old, inefficient vehicle (the clunker) for a new, more fuel-efficient model. In theory, this will help both the economy, by driving vehicle sales, and the environment, by taking gas guzzlers off the road and replacing them with more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Eligible clunkers must average 18 miles per gallon or less, and you must trade it in for a new model only (2008, 2009, 2010 models) that costs no more than $45,000.

There are two levels of rebates that depend on the estimated gas mileage of the new vehicle.

1.    $3,500—when you purchase a new vehicle that gets 4 or more miles per gallon over your previous vehicle

2.    $4,500—when you purchase a new vehicle that gets 10 or more miles per gallon over your previous vehicle

Trucks are a bit different with increases set at 2 MPG and 5+ MPG respectively.

Here are a few guidelines your vehicle must meet to be eligible for the program. Your vehicle must:

• Be manufactured less than 25 years before the date you trade it in
• Have a “new” combined city/highway fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon or less
• Be drivable
• Be continuously insured and registered to the same owner for the full year preceding the trade-in

Your trade-in may be foreign or domestic. Also, rebates WON’T be in addition to the trade-in value of the old vehicle. The vouchers are meant to replace the trade-in value of the vehicle, not supplement it. This is because the law requires that the trade-in vehicle be destroyed. Remember, this is about taking gas guzzlers off the road, not transferring ownership.

To figure out the trade-in value of your vehicle, visit the Kelly Blue Book site. To figure fuel economy for your vehicle and compare it to other vehicles, visit www.fueleconomy.gov.

For more information on Cash for Clunkers, visit:
www.cashforclunkersfacts.com

For the latest updates on this bill, follow along on Twitter:
twitter.com/cashclunkers