Say Goodbye to Cash for Clunkers

It’s been wildly popular, but now it’s going the way of the Edsel.

The Obama administration says the Cash for Clunkers program is ending Monday. The reason: The government is running out of money. Applications for rebates on clunkers will not be accepted after 8 p.m. Monday, the Washington Post reports.

President Barack Obama said the program had been “successful beyond anybody’s imagination.” He added that dealers “will get their money.”

The incentives have generated more than 457,000 vehicle sales and burned through $1.9 billion of the $3 billion Congress allocated for the program. Car buyers can get rebates of $3,500 or $4,500 for their old gas guzzlers if they trade them on newer models. Sold as a way to get those guzzlers off the road and put Americans into more fuel-efficient vehicles, the program has served as a stimulus for the beaten-down auto industry.

Both Ford and GM have upped production of new cars as dealers burned through inventory thanks to the clunkers program.

But Wednesday, the National Automobile Dealers Association called for an end to the program, saying they were worried about getting paid. They cited the burn rate on the money set aside for the program and called on the government to end it before it ran out of money.

And while the program was touted as an environmental winner, it was a bane to recyclers and carried with it an environmental cost. Part of the deal was that the clunkers couldn’t be resold. Their engines were disabled. For auto recyclers, that wasn’t exactly a winner. Destroying the engine ruined the most valuable part of the car that could be resold.

Many of those vehicles were likely to go straight to a scrap-metal reprocessor. And parts that could have been reused to offset the energy and materials that go into building new cars were junked instead.

But, oh well, at least it got people out to the car lots. It will be interesting to see what the crowds on the lots look like after Monday’s deadline has past.