“Clunkers”
or, if you prefer, No Oil On the Congressional Dipstick
a random pagemonkey rant

I was, Gentle Reader, all hyped and amped and pleased when the CARS program, aka Cash 4 Clunkers, finally got underway and started inciting sales, and most importantly, the getting-off-the-road of unloved and environmentally terroristic vehicles.

Enthused, that is, until I took the time to read up a bit on the program, and I am unenthused now.

 

If you have a moment, I’d like to tell you why what was such a good idea has, in my opine, come out to be a stupid and wasteful affair that is actually doing a fair amount of environmental harm.

But first, I’ll cum clean: I have owned enough Big Detroit Iron to sink a container ship.

Many of them were unique, one of a kind cars. Others were simply pleasing because they had a big V-8; less wasted time between fill-ups.

Most of them were an assault on the senses, and all of them were an assault on the planet. I have a lot to atone for.

Note that the video stream here doesn’t show any of the actual BDI I’ve owned, but I’ve owned most of the brands and models over the years. And I loved nearly every one of them, for some odd reason or another.

CARS has a major flaw in the form of a missing criteria for acceptance - that of needing the vehicle to have been insured and registered for the preceeding 12 months.

I understand the spirit.

Uncle Sam is looking for environmentally offensive vehicles, those which the planet would be better off without. And I think he’s smart for not paying up to $4,500 for something hauled out of field which hasn’t been driven for 20 years

 

On the other hand, there are many vehicles still on the road which meet the program’s other criteria, but don’t have current registration because they won’t pass an emission test.

And those are some of the ones we should have had in our crosshairs. They are not only damaging our world, they are tremendously dangerous from the legal aspect; any kerfluffle they’re involved in will lose money for all involved. I’m not defending the folks driving them, merely stating a reality that we would all be better off not having to acknowledge.

The law should have had some words like “current insurance and current registration, or proof of a failed emission test in lieu of current registration.” That would have denied the Queens of the Field entry to The Ball while allowing some of the dangerous hulks to meet a timely death.

 

We can assume that most of the vehicles being taken in are actually drivable and don’t emit great mushroom clouds of pollutants as they go down the street. The ones that do cannot be registered, and thus don’t qualify.

So, scratch the Clunkers program for those middle-classers who can neither afford to repair their older 2nd car nor buy a new one without the $4.5k bailout; just another part of “Your Street, USA” that Congress can’t see from where their heads are.

More disturbing is that these somewhat-servicable vehicles are being destroyed. One of the requirements of the program is that a caustic sodium compound is added to the vehicle’s engine oil and then the engine must be run until it self-destructs; another is that the rest of the car must be crushed.

Again, the law should have had some extra words: “Trade-ins are to be dispositioned so that all salvagable parts are recovered.”

Uncle wasn’t bright here - he could have recovered some of the cost of the program by simply having salvage yards bid on the parts.

The Wonders on the Hill missed at least two opportunities to do some real good as well as creating warm, fuzzy feelings for our leadership.

Our Border Patrol is equipped with nice vehicles a-plenty, and we have more large, accomodating cities closer to the border than you find in Mexico.

As a gesture of goodwill, we could have given the “cream of the crop” of traded-in SUVs and 4-wheel drives to Mexico for use in border patrol activities - thus helping a cash-strapped neighbor accomplish a common goal. It’s fairly easy to “wipe” the VIN (vehicle identification number) on most older trucks and SUVs, so they can’t make their way back onto our roads. And compared to some of the smoking junk piles I’ve seen La Migra driving around Arizona border towns, this would be a big help to the planet. Given the distances the Mexican border-papis have to drive, they would truly appreciate some nicer rides to roll in.

But the best social opportunity the Wonders on the Hill missed was such a simple one I’m surprised it got past them. Then again, maybe I’m not surprised - that sphincter-obscured view of “Your Street, USA” is to blame.

We have a lot of middle class folks, some single, some families, who are on the brink of homelessness and are hanging on by a thread. They’re motoring to such work as they can find in old, negligently maintained, inefficient, horribly polluting vehicles which are much worse for the environment than a lot of what has been traded in.

The CARS program should have had a second tier - bring in something worse and trade it in on something better.

That way, you bootstrap some folks who need it, while still getting the worst of the planet killers off the road and out of our lungs.

The bottom line is this: Our no-oil-dipsticks on the hill crafted a very workable program from their point of view, from the auto industry’s point of view, and from nobody else’s point of view. Many dealers are nonplussed by the program, because of the extra amount of work it involves on their part; if times weren’t super-hard, most would shine it on. As it stands, many dealers are running out of liquidity awaiting Uncle Sam’s checks because of the way the program is structured.

And because the program demands destruction of every part of every qualifying trade-in, it is incredibly wasteful - it’s a text book example of the denial mechanism. “If we buy up X number of older cars that takes X number of older cars off the road, and this will help solve the problem.”

It doesn’t solve the problem, because it doesn’t recycle the reusable parts - which is highly wasteful, because they could be used to service vehicles which don’t qualify. And it doesn’t take the “right” vehicles off the road.

For generations, Gentle Reader, mine included, the automobile was tightly woven into our psyches: a coming of age, or a mark of independence, or an indication of social stature.

Americana DeLuxe, one might say.

Anymore, not so much - so it’s time we started treating them like a resource instead of a commodity.

I’m not completely cured - cute boys and pickup trucks still give me wood. I’ll leave you with a couple nice snapshots: Tommy from Next Door Pass, and Kyle from Badpuppy.

~ pagemonkey