German Car Forum

In fact, the whole idea of scrapping a roadworthy car to get a rebate on a brand new one, just fills me with rage.

Watch the slow and painful death of this 1998 Jaguar XJ8 in the American "Cash for Clunkers" program.



Whoever was the sad bastard who traded the XJ8 in, clearly didn't deserve such nice car.

You saw that beige Volvo S80 behind the Jaguar? It was a 9 year old car... In Pristine condition. Here's the video of its equally slow and painful death:



And here's the BMW 530i they talked about in both videos:



All three useful nice cars being murdered on purpose... W-T- F?!

The problem is that your government's definition of a "clonker" is quite bad. First of all, cars with a catalytic converter should never be included... otherwise, the resourses used in building the new car will surely pollute more than the gains.

Their definition of pretty much everything is quite bad! The sooner we're rid of this load of incompetent liars the better.

My S4 had to go last year for financial reasons, so I'm currently driving around in a '98 B5 A4 1.9TDi quattro Sport which has 175,000 miles on the clock. In monetary terms it's worth buttons, but in value terms it's worth its weight in gold to me as it suits my current circumstances perfectly. It's a quattro, it has leather, climate control, cruise control, a CD changer and a full service history. Sure, there are plenty of other creature comforts I miss from the S4 days (not to mention the performance etc.) but this car costs me next to nothing to run and averages 50mpg (approx. 600 miles to a tank). Being an Audi it's built properly, everything works and the only things it's needed replacing in 50,000 miles were service and wear items. It's a relatively rare model too, so am I going to scrap this perfectly good A4 so that I can get £2000 off some Korean piece of crap?! Hell no! If some twat tries to tell me I should scrap my car in order to drive around in a bloody Hyundai i30 just because it's 'new', they're going to get told to feck off in no uncertain terms!

A monkey could have written a more effective bill.
No are over 25 years old, yes we all know those cars are super clean
I wonder how many of these "clunkers" are worth more then $4500?

The ones that are hurting the most are the charities. All the companies that take donated cars and sell them to help the poor are not getting anything because the cars they would be getting are now being crushed.
Not too surprised by this considering how much two certain people in power donate to charity each year. One donated less then 1% of his income(don't have a dollar figure), the other $350, but then both only made minimum $180K. So much for redistribution of wealth.

What are they putting into the engine?

Sodium silicate, which is basically "liquid glass".

Engine "killer" juice! Lol


Suppose to be something that destroys the engine!

Well people are loving the program and it's about time some of those cars come off the street. If there CLUNKERS then they must go!

That BMW is old and has served it's purpose to it's owner. Time for it to be Clunked. We can't keep everything.

I'm a bit confused wouldn't the Jag and Volvo traded in for far more than the $4,500 the government was offering? What are these people smoking, snorting, or shooting up?

Anyone who traded these cars in without looking at the trade-in value is stupid. Sad thing is I bet some of them did just that. On the other hand my father turned his car in for cash for clunkers and got way more then he would have if he traded it in or sold it out right. So in his case it was a good deal.

How many miles did the Jaguar have? The price of keeping that thing the road made it a clunker. It probably wasn't worth keeping anymore anyway, ditto the Volvo.


M

Checked the Volvo in trade in value which is a little less than 4500, but if the person where to sell it themselves they could have gotten away with a whole lot more.
Sucks for me because my Isuzu went belly up roughly 9 months ago, could have gotten in on this deal if it lasted that much longer...

The Jag was probably not worth it but the running cost of a typical early S80 is close to nil. That one looked quite banged up so that might have been the reason to let it taste the grinder...

Though it is painful for any gearhead to see a car get destroyed such is the way the industry works. I always get a little sad when I see old Mercs in junkyards... But hey at the end of the day it's just a hunk of metal and plastic.

True, then again some people don't want to go through the hassle of selling it.

Yea, they were hoping that it would last for a few months. Guess everyone was waiting for the right time to buy. Too bad the deal didn't last.

Actually those Jags and Volvos out here are pretty much worthless. Nobody wants them and even the dealership will low ball you to a point where it's better to burn the damn thing than give it to them. Dealerships out here are F__king poachers when it comes to trade ins.

I can't watch those videos. I might not be a fan of those cars but I can't watch them suffer either.

Holy cow! A Maserati in the yard too! Went for only $3500 & just 18480 miles on odo!

If by saying clunker you mean a car that's unfit for the road and therefore should be scrapped, then yes I agree. But in this case, "clunker" is a misnomer since the "clunkers" traded in were not really clunkers.

Anyway, this program proved to be a failure and it didn't help Detroit manufacturers that much. In fact, four out of five cars that people purchased under this program were from the Asian brands.

Actually it was very beneficial to a lot of dealers. I even heard on the news that Chevy factory works actually got paid overtime for the first time in months due to the demand. Of course the program wasn't going to change the whole market and get us out of the recession, but it was very helpful in getting the Automotive market back on track. I have a lot of friends who work for dealerships and they are finally making some money again.

Yes, a few good cars got scrapped, but in the end the humans benefited and that's all that matters. Yes, we are car enthusiasts, but a car is just metal.

Those cars were old, tired, too expensive to keep on the road so they should have been scrapped. Old Volvos, Jaguars or any European car gets to a point where it really isn't worth it to most people to keep fixing on them. Nobody wants an 11 year old Jaguar but a Jaguar nut. Ditto for a Volvo. They wouldn't get anything for them at a dealer outside of this program.


You have got to be kidding about this CARS program not helping Detroit? Ford posted its first sales gain in 2 years. GM, Ford, and Chrysler dealers were out of cars (that one that qualify) by second week of the program. The CARS program has been anything but a failure and it actually cleared out hundreds of thousands of sitting units for the American companies (and the Japanese).

Now the next story will be the huge drop of in sales for last week of August and the month of Sept...expect huge drops all across the board.

The killer is that everyone ramped up production for a program that is already over. So by the time all these rushed cars get to dealers there will be no buyers, literally putting Detroit an Japan back where they started, if they aren't careful/smart enough to stop increasing production now.


M

Sure you can say this program helped some people, it did.
But it also hurt a lot of people too.
It cleared out a bunch of cars that were just sitting around, so the companies plan to start increasing production just in time to make cars that will sit around for months. Leading to massive stoppages in a few weeks/months. Should lead to a very nice Christmas for many workers

All those cars have to be crushed by certain companies (how were they chosen?) These cars can not be used for anything else. People in my dad's office are not happy that they can not get any of the cars. They are forced to go out and buy (using tax payer money) special vehicles for high speed targets.

The thing is if it weren't for the program, all of these cars would have been kept by their owners. It's obvious that these folks were waiting for a good deal/opportunity. There are still millions of "clunkers" on the road for people who want to buy them. It's not like all of a sudden all "clunkers" are now gone. Watch the Streets! You will still see folks clunking around that didn't make it in time, or just didn't want new car payments.

It's not the end of the world!

This definitely needed to be said. People are acting like ALL the old cars are off the road or something, LOL.

The F__king point is, while this was good for many it was bad for many. That's just how life works, live with it.

This is America, that doesn't mean anything. For the past few years people were buying homes several hundred grand more than they could afford and buying/leasing one or two luxury cars to put into the garage. People don't need a "good deal" to go out and buy something.

They do in this economy. I know someone making over 5K a month who couldn't get a car loan on a new car because his credit was below 800, which is BS because he was lower about 15 points. Yeah, people can buy anything nowadays. Those days are over and have been over for about a year now, unless of course as Paul Mooney likes to say "you got the complexion for the protection," which still didn't help my friend out. LOL