From Vermont to California, exhausted but appreciative car dealers watched their lots grow empty as crowds rushed to trade in gas guzzlers during the final weekend of the popular Cash for Clunkers program.
The hectic pace of the $3 billion rebate program accelerated in the final weekend, after the government announced the program would end at 6 p.m. MDT today, two weeks earlier than expected.
Adding to the urgency, some dealers had said they would stop Cash for Clunkers sales even earlier to make sure the government reimbursed them for the rebates — or because they didn’t have enough eligible cars left.
In the final hours, customers streamed in.
“We thought about it a couple weeks ago,” said Annette Palmer, 51, at Town and Country Honda in Berlin, Vt., on Saturday with her husband. They hoped to trade in a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee for a Honda CR-V.
“We kind of dragged our feet. Then we heard it was closing, and we picked up our feet and ran,” she said.
Though short of some new models, such as the Ford Focus, Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla and Nissan Altima, many dealers were still selling as many cars as they could before tonight’s deadline.
Cash for Clunkers has been wildly successful in spurring new-car sales and getting gas-guzzling models off the road, though some energy experts have said the pollution reduction is too small to be cost-effective. Customers receive rebates of between $3,500 and $4,500, depending on the improvement in fuel efficiency from their old vehicle to their new one. As of early Friday, nearly half a million cars had been sold through the program.
But the new sales left many dealers worried about not being reimbursed by the government. As of Friday, dealers had been reimbursed for just a small fraction of the billions in sales.
Some dealers chose to stop participating over the weekend so they could have enough time to process and file the paperwork, including AutoNation Inc., the nation’s largest auto dealership chain.
