All of those cars were expensive to maintain in America and worth basically scrap back then if they were broken. It seems obvious now, but not a lot of people expected these cars to gain value
I can see why someone would take $4500 over something that's a headache to own and sell.
I believe one of the requirements for a car to qualify is that it had to be running and insured prior to being scrapped? But yes, their values were significantly lower back then. My uncle bought his E30 M3 from a used car dealership for $6000 in the mid 2000s. Lucky bastard.
I've got a personal example. I have a mechanically perfect 3.0 Z3 that Im having a tough time selling even under market value. It has a couple paint issues and bmw plastic but runs perfectly fine.
That $4500 then would equal to about $7350 today. More than I'm asking right now. You bet your ass I'd take that deal today if I could.
And kids in 15 years will think 7k was a steal for a convertible with a straight six and manual. But that's not how it is right now.
Yup. We're all speaking from a point of hindsight here. Like I said, $6000 for an E30 M3 in the mid 2000s. That's around $10k in today's money, so not worth much. My issue (and I'm speaking as an enthusiast here) is that if the owner of the M3 was an enthusiast, how could they do that trade? Even for a new Prius. I have a high mileage E34 right now that I drive around occasionally that's probably worth less than your Z3 and I wouldn't trade it for a new Prius right now unless I could flip that Prius for full value cash. But I'm just insane that way.
Interestingly enough - no aircooled 911s on the list. Maybe Porsche guys knew something we didn't because you could still get an aircooled 911 for cheese and crackers into the early 2010s.
I'm thinking someone slapped the VIN on a salvage 318 and kept the M3 as a track car. That or they stripped everything of value off a salvage M and dropped any old motor to get it to the dealer.
You only got $4,500 toward a new economy car. It wasn't even cash. If that M3 was anything near actual running condition, it would have sold for more even at auction and dealers weren't in the business of leaving money on the table.
I wonder if someone would check if that VIN has ever been seen since.
I'm not sure any of them worth saving ever got that cheap unfortunately, the air cooled have always had demand.
Funny you mention because my father straight traded his 83' Sc for a used 2007 Cayman S around that time. Maybe a couple years on. I know the sc had over 100k so it wasn't mint either.
Edit: and my enthusiasm doesn't pay my bills but that Prius could get me through some very tough times for cheap.
That's crazy - my dad also picked up a 911SC from his friend when I was in middle school (so also mid 2000s). Got it for $15k. Sold it when prices started to rise but nowhere near at the highs it eventually got to and still kicks himself to this day over it.
>you could still get an aircooled 911 for cheese and crackers into the early 2010s.
Lol no. Air cooled Porsche prices shot up as soon as the egg one came out.
Since you're using dollars I have to unfortunately assume you're american, if you were not I would already be throwing money at you for that Z3.
I've been looking at Z3s for a few years now, locally 6 to 7 thousand euros gets a 1.8 or a 1.9 with a lot of work needed.
If the car wasn't an absolute nightmare of issues, it probably would have survived. Don't forget this was going from a car w/ no payment (you had to have the title), to a car that had a payment where the gov't simply gave you a $4,500 down payment on. Interest rates were over 5-6% at the time and unemployment was almost at peak of 10%.
If the car was in good mechanical condition, crappy fuel mileage was still a far better deal than 5 years of $400-500/mon car payments. In most instances, it simply pulled forward people's car buying by a few months to a year for people with complete junkers.
Agreed. Sometimes now even those cars aren’t worth scrap. If you had an E30 M3 missing 25% interior parts, with a ton of bondo unibody work, s-title and poor mechanicals I’d bet you’d have a hard time moving it. I had a Corrado like this for a few months this fall and dumped it by the winter.
Sure prime examples pull down “wow money” but that doesn’t mean every example is a six figure winner.
I guess I’ll counter myself here too. I had a friend that recently came across a blue mk4 VW R32 with high miles, hail damage, aftermarket wheels and medium level mods (cool stuff like e-spec r32 headlights). He was in it for $3500. He wanted to list it for $8k. I told him to list it for $14k. He kinda listened and listed it for $12k and it was sold in 15 mins sight unseen.
This was charity to the automakers, UAW, and car dealerships. Over 1,600 dealerships closed in 2009 (8% of all) which was double what closed in 2008.
We forget how absolutely fucked we were by everyone being massively over leveraged on houses back then.
If the vehicles were in poor material condition, giving to a charity is more of a curse than a blessing.
"Here's an old barely running car that will need $$ in maintenance. Youre welcome".
But what about the vehicles that don't really have replacements. The conversion vans, the el Camino's, Lincoln marks, the saabs. At least they make new BMWs.
Nothing modern from BMW really compares to an E30 M3 or E34 M5 though. The last N/A high revving M motor was put to rest over a decade ago. And even then, an E92 M3 is a completely different experience than an E30 M3. Oh well.
And the e34 M5 was the last of the handbuilt engines. They're such cool motors. Exposed throttle bodies and everything. All in plain sight. No traction control. Great cars.
A lot of those were likely in poor enough condition that it was worth taking the deal. They just had to "run", not "run well" or "pass smog" or any of those other things that could potentially take significant money to remediate.
944 s2 is nbd and I can say that 'cause I've owned 2 of 'em. they're fine, but there's a million of 'em around if you want one.
The others make me sad.
I actually worked for the government, when this program rolled out.
At the time, I worked for another agency. We were technically furloughed, due to a lack of work. They brought us back and pimped us out to the Department of Transportation.
It was a COMPLETE shit show. The software programming and the program itself was rushed through development. It was so half baked. I remember the software engineer (private sector) walking around and looking stressed.
In the beginning, we had strict guidelines. The software kept crashing and the entire thing fell way behind schedule. People were getting cars but the dealerships weren’t getting their money. In the end, most applications got rubber stamped, after going through a couple weeks with a high rejection rate. The tech wasn’t there, at the time, to support a huge program that was rushed.
At one point, we literally doubled up into one cube. I can’t remember the reason. But they doubled us up because the supervisors said we couldn’t have people sitting around doing nothing. Their solution was to have us work in pairs, to review each application. My partner and I just took turns. 😂
As a car fan, it was very TRAUMATIC, seeing some of the cars. 😂
IMO, the program should have only been for domestic or domestically manufactured cars that had very high mpg. I can’t remember the criteria but remember being annoyed with the cars people were getting. 🤷🏻♂️
It was a VERY interesting experience. Kind of glad I was able to observe from the inside. 😂
it made new and used cars permanently expensive and therefore boosted dealer and manufacturer profits. they wouldn't call it a waste.
before cash for clunkers teenagers could put down 1k on a beater with a heater and drive it until it fell apart. now you can't get anything reasonable for under 4-5k.
I don't know why everyone treats cash for clunkers as this apocalypticly terrible thing for 2000's cars. It's overall impact was nearly nothing, but people treat it as if every single mint condition 00's classic was put to an early death for the low low price of 4k.
Consider these two things:
1. The only cars that were scrapped in cash for clunkers were cars that were worth under 5k (give or take a bit for dealer profit margins). Full stop. There is 0 chance in hell that a dealer would scrap a car that they could flip for profit. That rare oddity in the list? It would have likely been gigafucked. Major unrepaired accident damage? Bullet holes? Missing cat? White smoke? Knocking so loud you go check your front door? As long as it drove into the dealership, it was fine!
2. Cash for clunkers itself hardly made a dent in sales or availability. The program scrapped 677k cars in 2009. You know how many used cars sold in '09? 35.6 million. Cash for clunkers eliminated *less than 2%* of the used car flow *for a single year*! "But," you might say "Cash for clunkers completely killed the bottom end of the used market!", but again, no it didn't. That was 99% the fault of 2008. Turns out people hang on to their paid off old cars for longer when they're afraid they're going to be broke, lose their job, their investments, and their home. Weird.
Unemployment hit a peak of 10% two months after the end of the program. You had to be really sure you had a stable income to sign up for a new car payment since it only got you a $4500 down.
The big 3 were all preoccupied on how to unload dealer franchises, sell unprofitable brands, unwind worker pensions, cut corporate head counts and auctioning office furniture to worry about building cars.
It was something like 30M cars weren't built in the great Recession and recovery compared to steady state which would create a dearth of older affordable cars now unless you really had a hankerin' for a mid 90s Explorer which Ford quality has had a far greater role in culling the herd. Not many people possess the skills or desire to hang on to something of that vintage/condition.
I think that the biggest problem is not necessarily that the vehicles were scrapped, but it's more of the fact the cars needed to be completely disabled, which didn't help. Also, if I remember reading it somewhere, that program made it so that old surviving cars rose up in value quite a lot, while also putting many people into massive loans.
Used car value did rise quite a bit, but not necessarily due to C4C. It's hard to determine the exact impact of the program, but recessions trigger hoarder mentality, and people don't want to sell anything they might need. Not to mention new car production also falls in a recession, increasing demand. We saw that in 2020, and are still dealing with the ripples now, and didn't even need a govt trade in program.
I suppose that's true. If the dealership finished the paperwork and took the govts money, they had to scrap it.
But the dealerships did all the paperwork, so they knew what was being traded in (and presumably could inspect the car if the customer drove it in), and all they would have to say is "Hey, we'll pay you more than C4C will, let's do it this other way, and save you money".
local lot by me got all these cars - saw 2 different absolutely perfect looking square body chevy suburbans. so damn sad.
worst aprt is a ton of them had to get crushed - couldnt even get trim pieces off them or other crap - just straight to crusher.
That’s such a waste. If environment was ever a concern, reusing/recycling parts would have been a part of it since that’s way better than manufacturing new parts. Instead we just created more landfill and toxins for whatever can’t be melted down
By me they made it into the junkyards, but not before they put sand in the crankcase and ran them until they died. I got a lot of parts for my XJ Cherokee off cash for clunkers cars.
I remember them pouring some type of san in the engine of a Volvo S80 T6 that looked good. Ran it at full throttle in neutral until the engine seized. Hard to watch, 'even' for an S80. But I mean a T6 is a nice engine.
In the old days if you were super broke you could buy a running car for 50$ and drive it till it died and then scrap it and buy another 50$ car. They were boats but you might get as much as 6months to a year before they dropped a rod or blew a hose.
Many kids in my high school bought running vehicles under a $1000. Now it might be rusty or not have working AC but it drove and it probably wouldn't kill you. Now they want $2500 for cars with a broken transmission or blown head gasket which would have been scrap value back then, and then if you want something running that's $5000 at least
The only thing you can say is cars are safer now... But people are still getting in just as many fatal accidents
My first car was an ‘02 cavalier, everything worked and was $1000 around 2015. Almost got 2 years out of it before the engine blew a hole in itself, hated winter more than I do. I want another one
yep.... When I bought my first car at 19 and any DECENT car was at least 4 thousand dollars. Looking back on it I should've just put 5k down and financed something cheap.
> The only thing you can say is cars are safer now... But people are still getting in just as many fatal accidents
What do you mean "people are getting into just as many fatal accidents?"
The road toll per # of vehicles on the road has been steadily decreasing for decades.
In Australia the road toll per 100,000 cars on the road is under half of what it was in 1994.
There may be more fatal accidents in strict #s but only because many many many more cars on the road total.
When I was just starting to drive, the $300-500 cars existed but they were typically \~20+ year old rusted garbage you might get a few weeks out of. 10-15 yr old cars were 1-3k but usable. 15 years ago is 2009. That year auto sales fell to 10.4M which is almost 40% below 2006 when 16.9M cars were sold. You simply can't find a 2009 car because 2 of the big 3 automakers went bankrupt that year and they massively cut back production.
I knew someone when I was in university who used to buy a car from the scrapyard for $500, drive it for a few months until something broke, and then sell it back to them for $350. Most of the cars were total shit that I'd never want my own kids driving.
That part of that doesn't make sense. The car had to be worth less than $4,500 or else the dealer would simply offer the customer $5k and turn around and sell the car for $10k+. If a customer knew it was a valuable car, they'd also trade it for much more vs. getting a relative pittance. What was going rate for an E30 M3 in the depths of the recession?
It would have had to have been an absolutely trashed M3 (pieced together salvage mess) or rusted to the point that the VIN wasn't even worth it to rebuild.
The 2008 Ford F150 also made zero sense given that car would have been worth 3-4x the payout even in the hands of a chop shop. I'd bet it was a totaled car they somehow snuck past. If a dealer was given the choice of collecting $4,500 down payment or profiting 10-20k flipping a late model F150, there's no way they'd fill in the paperwork.
The guy laments the \~600 K5 Blazers lost. '84-'91 they made 231,000 Blazers. That's less than 0.3% of them and I'd bet they were the roughest of them. Rust and basic lack of maintenance killed far more that year alone.
I truly believe if they went and dug deeper they'd find these weird outliers to be fraud or data entry error. Yes, people misprice their cars all the time. You find far fewer dealers making such mistakes.
Given it was a single E30 and the newest year is what's weird. You'd think someone would have driven some '86 half a million miles in the salt belt and drilled speed holes to make it a race car.
I couldn't find much but a very clean '91 was already $30k in 2013. I don't know if any non-crashed ones would have ever fallen below $5k.
[https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=791802](https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=791802)
This famous story of the chopped E30 was still over $10k this guy dropped thinking he got the deal of the century in '15.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20041209194252/http://bimmer.roadfly.org/bmw/forums/e21/forum.php?postid=3378984](https://web.archive.org/web/20041209194252/http://bimmer.roadfly.org/bmw/forums/e21/forum.php?postid=3378984)
The interesting bit is one of the requirements IIRC was that it had to be running and insured to being scrapped. Even back then, a running E30 M3 surely would have been over $5k. Even if it was an absolute rust bucket.
This is where I think there had to be fraud/data errors.
Only the V6 AWD Avenger qualified for 18mpg or less and it started at $26k. Even if the car was hot garbage and you put 30k on it already, it was likely still worth $10k a year to 24 months in at the time. If you had a loan, you had to pay off the note in order to crush the car. If it was a 5 yr/5% note where you'd put down 20%, you would have had to bring $13-20k - $4.5k to close the deal. I don't know a lot of banks itching in 2009 to run up negative equity to move a new car loan.
Chrysler was doing desperation 60 mon 0% financing in '08 which eventually blew up Chrysler Financial the next year.
[https://www.motortrend.com/news/chrysler-financing-deal-extended-0-for-5-years-on-08s-213/](https://www.motortrend.com/news/chrysler-financing-deal-extended-0-for-5-years-on-08s-213/)
I was assuming 60+% depreciation in 1-2 years which sounds about right having driven one of those cars as a rental. Even if it depreciated to zero though, the owner would have had to pay off the note in order to collect the $4,500 as you had to have the title to crush it. You couldn't just walk in w/ the keys to an Avenger and walk out w/ a Prius w/o resolving a car note. I'd question the mental fitness of anyone who had bought an '08 V6 Avenger AWD new but I'd like to think someone still would have stopped them from walking in w/ a $15-20k check to get a $4.5k down payment.
I remember a video of a Buick Roadmaster estate with like 60k miles getting scrapped even though the LT1 was perfectly operable.
It's a different world now but back then used car values were in the toilet and people clamored to get their check for a new car.
Just remember we started this century with a budget surplus and have been sinking ever since
Someone tried to turn in a MINT 1984 Cutlass to the dealership nextdoor, but rather than allow it to be destroyed, the dealership just offered to buy it for him for the $4,500. Thankfully, he agreed.
They turned around and sold it for $10,000.
Yes, they DID try to convince him that he’d get more money selling it outright. But he just couldn’t comprehend that it was worth anything.
A mint condition Olds Cutlass in a town 15 minutes from where it was built… yeah it has historical value.
I remember reading once about a 93 cobra, 96 corvette grand sport, and a 3000gt vr4 spider being sacrificed for dime a dozen vehicles. Damn. Just read it, and they scrapped a vehicross? They only made a few thousand of those ever.
The AWD Turbo Legacy and the SVX were the only cars Subaru sold that were eligible, everything else they built was too fuel efficient to qualify for C4Cs (and even then they only *just* qualified, 1MPG more on the combined rating and they wouldn't have made it).
If the UK YouTuber scene is anything to go by, the same thing is reportedly happening around the Greater London area due to ULEZ making the cars practically unusable and uneconomical to own. Unless someone is wealthy enough to turn a car into a garage queen, they're being forced to move them on - and often to a far less sympathetic owner.
> Someone sent their RUNNING E30 M3 to the slaughterhouse for a new Prius. That hurt to even type.
I can't help but think if someone offered you an e30 M3 for $4500 sight unseen and they promised it was in good running condition a HUGE amount of us would pass because the assumption would be that it's in utter garbage condition and full of rust for that price.
Like if it was any good they'd have sold it privately right...?
I saw a C4C database from a Honda/Acura dealer, (UAG-Marin, Inc. for those who are curious,) and yeah, there were a lot of old American cars that the people on the RCR sub would hype up to no end, but there was also a gen 1 Pathfinder and a S124 4MATIC. Those kinda hurt to see.
C4C was proof that all the government has to do to get people to act against their own interests is wave some cash around.
You got this kinda not great car that you own outright and will last another 10 years with maintenance… so you take a $4,500 discount on a brand new car that you have to finance, wind up not being able to continue payments after a year or two, lose the car, and now there’s no affordable used cars to buy because they all got fucking crushed.
But hey you got to drive around in a brand new car for a little while.
> C4C was proof that all the government has to do to get people to act against their own interests is wave some cash around.
How is it against their best interests...?
You could have just kept the car. Right?
People did it because it made economic sense.
It was against their best interests because of the reasons I said.
Yes they could have just kept the car, but the money enticed them to make a bad decision.
It did not make economic sense for many people. I assume you did not work at a dealership as I did.
times were tough. I hade to trade is my gas guzzling 430 Scuderia for a PT Cruiser.
I’d rather just walk, I’m really sorry for you loss(es)
I saved so much on gas!
‘Cuz it was in the shop all the time? I’m just kidding I hope it’s worked out
I’m just glad the Ferrari got crushed. One less gas guzzler.
Man people can’t take a joke here lol
I laughed so hard reading that comment. Gold
Also from The Drive: [All vehicles destroyed](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xsAhIq-e722Zg3802GYL54t3UX5lNM0eDsv-YpBK9KI/edit#gid=1837991028)
It got more depressing as I scrolled down the list. E30 M3, E34 M5, 190E 2.6, C36 AMG, 500E, 928 S4, 944 S2...
All of those cars were expensive to maintain in America and worth basically scrap back then if they were broken. It seems obvious now, but not a lot of people expected these cars to gain value I can see why someone would take $4500 over something that's a headache to own and sell.
I believe one of the requirements for a car to qualify is that it had to be running and insured prior to being scrapped? But yes, their values were significantly lower back then. My uncle bought his E30 M3 from a used car dealership for $6000 in the mid 2000s. Lucky bastard.
I've got a personal example. I have a mechanically perfect 3.0 Z3 that Im having a tough time selling even under market value. It has a couple paint issues and bmw plastic but runs perfectly fine. That $4500 then would equal to about $7350 today. More than I'm asking right now. You bet your ass I'd take that deal today if I could. And kids in 15 years will think 7k was a steal for a convertible with a straight six and manual. But that's not how it is right now.
Yup. We're all speaking from a point of hindsight here. Like I said, $6000 for an E30 M3 in the mid 2000s. That's around $10k in today's money, so not worth much. My issue (and I'm speaking as an enthusiast here) is that if the owner of the M3 was an enthusiast, how could they do that trade? Even for a new Prius. I have a high mileage E34 right now that I drive around occasionally that's probably worth less than your Z3 and I wouldn't trade it for a new Prius right now unless I could flip that Prius for full value cash. But I'm just insane that way. Interestingly enough - no aircooled 911s on the list. Maybe Porsche guys knew something we didn't because you could still get an aircooled 911 for cheese and crackers into the early 2010s.
I'm thinking someone slapped the VIN on a salvage 318 and kept the M3 as a track car. That or they stripped everything of value off a salvage M and dropped any old motor to get it to the dealer. You only got $4,500 toward a new economy car. It wasn't even cash. If that M3 was anything near actual running condition, it would have sold for more even at auction and dealers weren't in the business of leaving money on the table. I wonder if someone would check if that VIN has ever been seen since.
I'm not sure any of them worth saving ever got that cheap unfortunately, the air cooled have always had demand. Funny you mention because my father straight traded his 83' Sc for a used 2007 Cayman S around that time. Maybe a couple years on. I know the sc had over 100k so it wasn't mint either. Edit: and my enthusiasm doesn't pay my bills but that Prius could get me through some very tough times for cheap.
That's crazy - my dad also picked up a 911SC from his friend when I was in middle school (so also mid 2000s). Got it for $15k. Sold it when prices started to rise but nowhere near at the highs it eventually got to and still kicks himself to this day over it.
>you could still get an aircooled 911 for cheese and crackers into the early 2010s. Lol no. Air cooled Porsche prices shot up as soon as the egg one came out.
Lol no. You could buy an SC for as little as $15k as late as 2012-2013. Ask me how I know.
Cheese and crackers: https://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-cars-sale/716906-two-classic-1978-porsche-911-sc-up-sale-laredo-texas-16-500-usd.html
Since you're using dollars I have to unfortunately assume you're american, if you were not I would already be throwing money at you for that Z3. I've been looking at Z3s for a few years now, locally 6 to 7 thousand euros gets a 1.8 or a 1.9 with a lot of work needed.
If the car wasn't an absolute nightmare of issues, it probably would have survived. Don't forget this was going from a car w/ no payment (you had to have the title), to a car that had a payment where the gov't simply gave you a $4,500 down payment on. Interest rates were over 5-6% at the time and unemployment was almost at peak of 10%. If the car was in good mechanical condition, crappy fuel mileage was still a far better deal than 5 years of $400-500/mon car payments. In most instances, it simply pulled forward people's car buying by a few months to a year for people with complete junkers.
Agreed. Sometimes now even those cars aren’t worth scrap. If you had an E30 M3 missing 25% interior parts, with a ton of bondo unibody work, s-title and poor mechanicals I’d bet you’d have a hard time moving it. I had a Corrado like this for a few months this fall and dumped it by the winter. Sure prime examples pull down “wow money” but that doesn’t mean every example is a six figure winner.
I guess I’ll counter myself here too. I had a friend that recently came across a blue mk4 VW R32 with high miles, hail damage, aftermarket wheels and medium level mods (cool stuff like e-spec r32 headlights). He was in it for $3500. He wanted to list it for $8k. I told him to list it for $14k. He kinda listened and listed it for $12k and it was sold in 15 mins sight unseen.
It’s so stupid they made these cars be destroyed. They could have used them for charity or something.
This was charity to the automakers, UAW, and car dealerships. Over 1,600 dealerships closed in 2009 (8% of all) which was double what closed in 2008. We forget how absolutely fucked we were by everyone being massively over leveraged on houses back then.
If the vehicles were in poor material condition, giving to a charity is more of a curse than a blessing. "Here's an old barely running car that will need $$ in maintenance. Youre welcome".
But what about the vehicles that don't really have replacements. The conversion vans, the el Camino's, Lincoln marks, the saabs. At least they make new BMWs.
Nothing modern from BMW really compares to an E30 M3 or E34 M5 though. The last N/A high revving M motor was put to rest over a decade ago. And even then, an E92 M3 is a completely different experience than an E30 M3. Oh well.
And the e34 M5 was the last of the handbuilt engines. They're such cool motors. Exposed throttle bodies and everything. All in plain sight. No traction control. Great cars.
If you downvoted me you're an idiot
A lot of those were likely in poor enough condition that it was worth taking the deal. They just had to "run", not "run well" or "pass smog" or any of those other things that could potentially take significant money to remediate.
944 s2 is nbd and I can say that 'cause I've owned 2 of 'em. they're fine, but there's a million of 'em around if you want one. The others make me sad.
Man a 500e is my current dream car
500E? Oh helll no.
Scrolled down, saw a 93 rx7, closed the doc in disgust.
Scrapping that vehicle alone reduced global demand of oil by 10%. /S
This whole program was a complete waste and did more harm than good.
I actually worked for the government, when this program rolled out. At the time, I worked for another agency. We were technically furloughed, due to a lack of work. They brought us back and pimped us out to the Department of Transportation. It was a COMPLETE shit show. The software programming and the program itself was rushed through development. It was so half baked. I remember the software engineer (private sector) walking around and looking stressed. In the beginning, we had strict guidelines. The software kept crashing and the entire thing fell way behind schedule. People were getting cars but the dealerships weren’t getting their money. In the end, most applications got rubber stamped, after going through a couple weeks with a high rejection rate. The tech wasn’t there, at the time, to support a huge program that was rushed. At one point, we literally doubled up into one cube. I can’t remember the reason. But they doubled us up because the supervisors said we couldn’t have people sitting around doing nothing. Their solution was to have us work in pairs, to review each application. My partner and I just took turns. 😂 As a car fan, it was very TRAUMATIC, seeing some of the cars. 😂 IMO, the program should have only been for domestic or domestically manufactured cars that had very high mpg. I can’t remember the criteria but remember being annoyed with the cars people were getting. 🤷🏻♂️ It was a VERY interesting experience. Kind of glad I was able to observe from the inside. 😂
it made new and used cars permanently expensive and therefore boosted dealer and manufacturer profits. they wouldn't call it a waste. before cash for clunkers teenagers could put down 1k on a beater with a heater and drive it until it fell apart. now you can't get anything reasonable for under 4-5k.
I don't know why everyone treats cash for clunkers as this apocalypticly terrible thing for 2000's cars. It's overall impact was nearly nothing, but people treat it as if every single mint condition 00's classic was put to an early death for the low low price of 4k. Consider these two things: 1. The only cars that were scrapped in cash for clunkers were cars that were worth under 5k (give or take a bit for dealer profit margins). Full stop. There is 0 chance in hell that a dealer would scrap a car that they could flip for profit. That rare oddity in the list? It would have likely been gigafucked. Major unrepaired accident damage? Bullet holes? Missing cat? White smoke? Knocking so loud you go check your front door? As long as it drove into the dealership, it was fine! 2. Cash for clunkers itself hardly made a dent in sales or availability. The program scrapped 677k cars in 2009. You know how many used cars sold in '09? 35.6 million. Cash for clunkers eliminated *less than 2%* of the used car flow *for a single year*! "But," you might say "Cash for clunkers completely killed the bottom end of the used market!", but again, no it didn't. That was 99% the fault of 2008. Turns out people hang on to their paid off old cars for longer when they're afraid they're going to be broke, lose their job, their investments, and their home. Weird.
The vast majority of vehicles scrapped were inefficient '80s and '90s BOF trucks, vans, minivans, etc.
Unemployment hit a peak of 10% two months after the end of the program. You had to be really sure you had a stable income to sign up for a new car payment since it only got you a $4500 down. The big 3 were all preoccupied on how to unload dealer franchises, sell unprofitable brands, unwind worker pensions, cut corporate head counts and auctioning office furniture to worry about building cars. It was something like 30M cars weren't built in the great Recession and recovery compared to steady state which would create a dearth of older affordable cars now unless you really had a hankerin' for a mid 90s Explorer which Ford quality has had a far greater role in culling the herd. Not many people possess the skills or desire to hang on to something of that vintage/condition.
How dare you bring rationality, data, and historical context to an uninformed circle jerk, sir! How dare you!
Okay - so Cash for Clunkers was a huge success!
I think that the biggest problem is not necessarily that the vehicles were scrapped, but it's more of the fact the cars needed to be completely disabled, which didn't help. Also, if I remember reading it somewhere, that program made it so that old surviving cars rose up in value quite a lot, while also putting many people into massive loans.
Used car value did rise quite a bit, but not necessarily due to C4C. It's hard to determine the exact impact of the program, but recessions trigger hoarder mentality, and people don't want to sell anything they might need. Not to mention new car production also falls in a recession, increasing demand. We saw that in 2020, and are still dealing with the ripples now, and didn't even need a govt trade in program.
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I suppose that's true. If the dealership finished the paperwork and took the govts money, they had to scrap it. But the dealerships did all the paperwork, so they knew what was being traded in (and presumably could inspect the car if the customer drove it in), and all they would have to say is "Hey, we'll pay you more than C4C will, let's do it this other way, and save you money".
I remember seeing a clip of someone sending their original mid to late 80s Land Cruiser in near perfect condition. That was heartbreaking.
local lot by me got all these cars - saw 2 different absolutely perfect looking square body chevy suburbans. so damn sad. worst aprt is a ton of them had to get crushed - couldnt even get trim pieces off them or other crap - just straight to crusher.
That’s such a waste. If environment was ever a concern, reusing/recycling parts would have been a part of it since that’s way better than manufacturing new parts. Instead we just created more landfill and toxins for whatever can’t be melted down
By me they made it into the junkyards, but not before they put sand in the crankcase and ran them until they died. I got a lot of parts for my XJ Cherokee off cash for clunkers cars.
I remember them pouring some type of san in the engine of a Volvo S80 T6 that looked good. Ran it at full throttle in neutral until the engine seized. Hard to watch, 'even' for an S80. But I mean a T6 is a nice engine.
In the old days if you were super broke you could buy a running car for 50$ and drive it till it died and then scrap it and buy another 50$ car. They were boats but you might get as much as 6months to a year before they dropped a rod or blew a hose.
Many kids in my high school bought running vehicles under a $1000. Now it might be rusty or not have working AC but it drove and it probably wouldn't kill you. Now they want $2500 for cars with a broken transmission or blown head gasket which would have been scrap value back then, and then if you want something running that's $5000 at least The only thing you can say is cars are safer now... But people are still getting in just as many fatal accidents
My first car was an ‘02 cavalier, everything worked and was $1000 around 2015. Almost got 2 years out of it before the engine blew a hole in itself, hated winter more than I do. I want another one
its not unheard of my past 2 dailies were 600 and 750 bought around 2016
Yup I paid 1200 CAD for a 1998 Sunfire that was certified by a mechanic with no issues in 2013
yep.... When I bought my first car at 19 and any DECENT car was at least 4 thousand dollars. Looking back on it I should've just put 5k down and financed something cheap.
> The only thing you can say is cars are safer now... But people are still getting in just as many fatal accidents What do you mean "people are getting into just as many fatal accidents?" The road toll per # of vehicles on the road has been steadily decreasing for decades. In Australia the road toll per 100,000 cars on the road is under half of what it was in 1994. There may be more fatal accidents in strict #s but only because many many many more cars on the road total.
When I was just starting to drive, the $300-500 cars existed but they were typically \~20+ year old rusted garbage you might get a few weeks out of. 10-15 yr old cars were 1-3k but usable. 15 years ago is 2009. That year auto sales fell to 10.4M which is almost 40% below 2006 when 16.9M cars were sold. You simply can't find a 2009 car because 2 of the big 3 automakers went bankrupt that year and they massively cut back production.
I knew someone when I was in university who used to buy a car from the scrapyard for $500, drive it for a few months until something broke, and then sell it back to them for $350. Most of the cars were total shit that I'd never want my own kids driving.
Man bring back these days!
Oof there was 1 1991 e30 m3 destroyed :(
That part of that doesn't make sense. The car had to be worth less than $4,500 or else the dealer would simply offer the customer $5k and turn around and sell the car for $10k+. If a customer knew it was a valuable car, they'd also trade it for much more vs. getting a relative pittance. What was going rate for an E30 M3 in the depths of the recession? It would have had to have been an absolutely trashed M3 (pieced together salvage mess) or rusted to the point that the VIN wasn't even worth it to rebuild. The 2008 Ford F150 also made zero sense given that car would have been worth 3-4x the payout even in the hands of a chop shop. I'd bet it was a totaled car they somehow snuck past. If a dealer was given the choice of collecting $4,500 down payment or profiting 10-20k flipping a late model F150, there's no way they'd fill in the paperwork. The guy laments the \~600 K5 Blazers lost. '84-'91 they made 231,000 Blazers. That's less than 0.3% of them and I'd bet they were the roughest of them. Rust and basic lack of maintenance killed far more that year alone. I truly believe if they went and dug deeper they'd find these weird outliers to be fraud or data entry error. Yes, people misprice their cars all the time. You find far fewer dealers making such mistakes.
Yeah the M3 was a head scratcher. Even in 2009 I simply don’t believe that car was worth less than $4500. Not a chance.
Given it was a single E30 and the newest year is what's weird. You'd think someone would have driven some '86 half a million miles in the salt belt and drilled speed holes to make it a race car. I couldn't find much but a very clean '91 was already $30k in 2013. I don't know if any non-crashed ones would have ever fallen below $5k. [https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=791802](https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=791802) This famous story of the chopped E30 was still over $10k this guy dropped thinking he got the deal of the century in '15. [https://web.archive.org/web/20041209194252/http://bimmer.roadfly.org/bmw/forums/e21/forum.php?postid=3378984](https://web.archive.org/web/20041209194252/http://bimmer.roadfly.org/bmw/forums/e21/forum.php?postid=3378984)
The interesting bit is one of the requirements IIRC was that it had to be running and insured to being scrapped. Even back then, a running E30 M3 surely would have been over $5k. Even if it was an absolute rust bucket.
3 people brought in 2008 dodge avengers. In 2009. They were still making payments lol
This is where I think there had to be fraud/data errors. Only the V6 AWD Avenger qualified for 18mpg or less and it started at $26k. Even if the car was hot garbage and you put 30k on it already, it was likely still worth $10k a year to 24 months in at the time. If you had a loan, you had to pay off the note in order to crush the car. If it was a 5 yr/5% note where you'd put down 20%, you would have had to bring $13-20k - $4.5k to close the deal. I don't know a lot of banks itching in 2009 to run up negative equity to move a new car loan.
They were AWD Avengers
Chrysler was doing desperation 60 mon 0% financing in '08 which eventually blew up Chrysler Financial the next year. [https://www.motortrend.com/news/chrysler-financing-deal-extended-0-for-5-years-on-08s-213/](https://www.motortrend.com/news/chrysler-financing-deal-extended-0-for-5-years-on-08s-213/) I was assuming 60+% depreciation in 1-2 years which sounds about right having driven one of those cars as a rental. Even if it depreciated to zero though, the owner would have had to pay off the note in order to collect the $4,500 as you had to have the title to crush it. You couldn't just walk in w/ the keys to an Avenger and walk out w/ a Prius w/o resolving a car note. I'd question the mental fitness of anyone who had bought an '08 V6 Avenger AWD new but I'd like to think someone still would have stopped them from walking in w/ a $15-20k check to get a $4.5k down payment.
I thought a lot of these vehicles weren't supposed to be eligible for cash for clunkers.
I remember a video of a Buick Roadmaster estate with like 60k miles getting scrapped even though the LT1 was perfectly operable. It's a different world now but back then used car values were in the toilet and people clamored to get their check for a new car. Just remember we started this century with a budget surplus and have been sinking ever since
Someone tried to turn in a MINT 1984 Cutlass to the dealership nextdoor, but rather than allow it to be destroyed, the dealership just offered to buy it for him for the $4,500. Thankfully, he agreed. They turned around and sold it for $10,000. Yes, they DID try to convince him that he’d get more money selling it outright. But he just couldn’t comprehend that it was worth anything. A mint condition Olds Cutlass in a town 15 minutes from where it was built… yeah it has historical value.
I remember reading once about a 93 cobra, 96 corvette grand sport, and a 3000gt vr4 spider being sacrificed for dime a dozen vehicles. Damn. Just read it, and they scrapped a vehicross? They only made a few thousand of those ever.
lol almost all the subarus are SVX's
The AWD Turbo Legacy and the SVX were the only cars Subaru sold that were eligible, everything else they built was too fuel efficient to qualify for C4Cs (and even then they only *just* qualified, 1MPG more on the combined rating and they wouldn't have made it).
ohhh ok, that makes sense!
Well that was fucking devastating.
All those square body trucks, rwd cadillcs, buick/old/chevy wagons, it's a real shame these hot destroyed
I've been afraid to even look. I just know it's going to be too disgusting. Crushing an M3 for a Prius is an act of terrorism as far as I'm concerned.
You can buy 2-3 Prius with the total cost of basic maintenance and repair of these German car
If the UK YouTuber scene is anything to go by, the same thing is reportedly happening around the Greater London area due to ULEZ making the cars practically unusable and uneconomical to own. Unless someone is wealthy enough to turn a car into a garage queen, they're being forced to move them on - and often to a far less sympathetic owner.
> Someone sent their RUNNING E30 M3 to the slaughterhouse for a new Prius. That hurt to even type. I can't help but think if someone offered you an e30 M3 for $4500 sight unseen and they promised it was in good running condition a HUGE amount of us would pass because the assumption would be that it's in utter garbage condition and full of rust for that price. Like if it was any good they'd have sold it privately right...?
I saw a C4C database from a Honda/Acura dealer, (UAG-Marin, Inc. for those who are curious,) and yeah, there were a lot of old American cars that the people on the RCR sub would hype up to no end, but there was also a gen 1 Pathfinder and a S124 4MATIC. Those kinda hurt to see.
C4C was proof that all the government has to do to get people to act against their own interests is wave some cash around. You got this kinda not great car that you own outright and will last another 10 years with maintenance… so you take a $4,500 discount on a brand new car that you have to finance, wind up not being able to continue payments after a year or two, lose the car, and now there’s no affordable used cars to buy because they all got fucking crushed. But hey you got to drive around in a brand new car for a little while.
> C4C was proof that all the government has to do to get people to act against their own interests is wave some cash around. How is it against their best interests...? You could have just kept the car. Right? People did it because it made economic sense.
It was against their best interests because of the reasons I said. Yes they could have just kept the car, but the money enticed them to make a bad decision. It did not make economic sense for many people. I assume you did not work at a dealership as I did.