Scott said
"These are expensive cars being parted, BMW M5, Rover Disco 2's and Range Rovers. Benz 500 series, nice SAABS and Caddys. Seems like a shame that they are sitting here rusting, but hell it's all money for me. Why would people toss away a 8k car for a 4k credit I'll never understand."
Do you think those are the typical clunker trade-in vehicle? That's not true at all.
Here are the facts. 677,000 vehicles were traded in. 3,515 were BMWs, 2,158 were Land/Range Rovers, 590 were SAABs, I can't tell how many Cadillacs, they're all GMs in the report.
http://www.cars.gov/files/reports/additional-statistics.pdf
And you think your parts source is going to dry up due to clunkers? That's not likely.
How many Land/Range Rovers are in salvage yards throughout the US. They sold the 500,000th Land/Range Rover in the US back in June 2009 (that's counting since 1987). And they are such pieces of crap that I'd think a pretty large number are in graveyards. For sure we know 100,000 were sold by 1997, most of those have probably been retired by now. So how much is the clunkers program actually threatening your supply of junked Land/Range Rovers? 2,158 vehicles out of at least 100,000 junked so far? 2,158 out of 500,000 to be junked eventually?
Some people have this idea that the clunkers program destroyed valuable cars. Well, people are not that stupid, they didn't dump valuable cars for $4,500. 84% of cars traded in were trucks (includes SUVs), 70% were domestics. Avg mpg of the trade-ins was 15.8 MPG. That's from govt stats. These were old vehicles: according to a large dealership chain, 93% of the trade-ins had >100K miles. Another large chain said avg MPG of their trade-ins was 138K miles. The top ten vehicles traded in were all American SUVs, trucks and vans (list below).
So, the typical clunker trade-in was a old, very high-mileage, Detroit pickup or SUV or minivan. We all know how about how much that vehicle is worth - about a thousand bucks, if in nice shape. As a dealer trade-in, maybe $500.
1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
5. Ford Explorer 2WD
6. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Ford F-150 Pickup 4WD
9. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
10. Ford Windstar