Clunkers Follow Up

I wrote a couple months ago about the 'clunkers' plan and asked if it made financial sense. While the jury is still out on that one, it is for certain that people are out there wanting to buy, buy, buy.

The plan exploded! It's taken the housing stimulus a few months to take hold, but with clunkers, they are more then half way to the 1 billion dollar cap and are voting this month whether to extend it out to 2 billion. Hard to believe.

I'm happy that the Ford Focus is at the top spot. Looks like the Corolla, Civic, Camry, and (yes) the Prius (my favorite car, see pics of Inco Sudbury Mine) round out the top five. Personally, I wouldn't have picked the Corolla or Prius in there. I was hopping for the Jetta to do well or even one of Pontiac's G series of cars. It is interesting to see Kia and Hyundai passed over in the top 5 as well.

Rank Vehicle Hybrid Combined City/Hwy mileage
1 Ford Focus No 27-28
2 Honda Civic Yes 24-42
3 Toyota Corolla No 25-30
4 Toyota Prius Yes 46
5 Ford Escape Yes 20-32
6 Toyota Camry Yes 23-34
7 Dodge Caliber No 22-27
8 Hyundai Elantra No 26-28
9 Honda Fit No 29-31
10 Chevy Cobalt No 25-30

Heh heh. Prius doesn't get a hyphen. It's just always 46 - damnit. No hills in magical fantasy car land I guess. Eh? Anyone else see the mileage range on the Escape and Camry? Strange. Roll the dice on those cars and see what mileage you get!

I still think this will increase the value of older, desirable cars. But I guess for that to matter, you have to be someone who is looking.

I'm not sure why the program is in flux right now other then maybe we have lots of fraud on our hands, maybe they want to look at providing more incentive for people "buying American" or perhaps the administration had only allotted two interns to process the now over 150,000 clunker returns.

I dunno. But let's see how the plan returns here soon. My guess is some of the rules will change (MPG possibly, or more for buying a GM, since the government owns a good bit of that).