| Message |
I have seen many posts about the cash for clunkers law, mostly negative. Here is one more negative tidbit. Last November, my girlfriend and I checked prices on a 2009 Nissan Rogue. For a heavily loaded vehicle, we were quoted a price around $25k. The invoice price was $27k, and the sticker was over $29k. We didn't bite. We liked the car, but not that much. We were looking at the price vs the incremental gain to our lives, not at the discount, so we didn't lose our self-control. Along comes cash for clunkers. I have been waiting and waiting for the law to pass, and when it finally did, I spent a couple weeks pulling the aftermarket parts off my old '87 Cherokee. The past weekend, we stopped in at Nissan. Well, this week, there is no discount from the sticker price. Supply and demand. So, essentially, if I crush my beloved Jeep, pretty much all of that government rebate goes straight into the pockets of the dealer, without passing through my hands first. That didn't seem like a good deal to me, and I doubt the typical consumer has the information I have: you would have been better off buying a car back in November and keeping your clunker. A lot of people have been losing their self-control on the car-buying thing. There isn't a Jeep Patriot in a 500 mile radius from me (the Patriot is a cousin to the Rogue...same transmission, similar engines, prices, etc). I am bummed that I don't have a shiny new Rogue, and that I have a rusty old Jeep that is STOCK with a pile of aftermarket parts on the garage floor laughing at me, and that the dealerships have gotten all the tax money without the consumers benefiting at all. I honestly thought it was a good law, but I of all people should have known how the market resists intervention. The economic "incentive" was too large, and turned into a "distortion" that dealers were in a position to capitalize. Woe the hapless consumer. That is all.
- John
|
 |
