NEW YORK — Car and truck owners looking to junk their gas guzzlers are flocking to dealerships to take advantage of the government’s “cash for clunkers” program and buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, boosting sales in showrooms across the country.
“It’s water to thirsty people,” said Dave Kelleher, owner of two Chrysler dealerships outside Philadelphia. He said the number of shoppers has more than doubled at one of his dealerships and is climbing at the other. “The last two days have been ripping,” he said.
The program — officially called the Cash Allowance Rebate System, or CARS — took effect over the weekend at the nearly 20,000 car dealers who have signed up with the Department of Transportation. The program offers rebates of $3,500 to $4,500 for car shoppers who scrap their old vehicles to buy ones with better gas mileage.
Jim Aten, 68, was at a Toyota dealership in Gladstone, Ore., where he used the government rebate to get a peppy new Scion xB.
The car gets about 28 miles per gallon on the highway compared with 17 for his old Ford Starcraft, a monster of a vehicle.
Without the incentive, “I would probably keep driving it,” Aten said.
In Chattanooga, Tenn., the rebates generated about a dozen deals over the weekend for Mountain View Ford.
“Most of them are truly clunkers,” Mountain View president Clay Watson said of the big Expeditions and vans that customers have been trading in. One customer brought in a 1989 Ford F150 pickup. It had 285,000 miles on it and would have gotten only about $200 or $300 in a trade-in.
