Cash for clunkers brings much-needed stimulus

I miss our 1994 Aerostar in these days of clunker-envy.

It was the extended version that could accommodate a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood if the back seats were removed. The all-wheel drive got us pretty much wherever we wanted to go, including a run into the Kalmiopsis Wilderness that bounced that vehicle into a new dimension of misalignment.

Creature comforts amounted to an air-conditioning system that noticeably impaired engine function. As if gravy-injection had kicked in.

When we limped home from a Grand Canyon trip, the Aerostar’s days were numbered. We took it down to Union Gospel Mission Motors, handed over the title, and with it our ticket to the “cash for clunkers” festival sweeping showrooms all over the nation.

We’re missing the show, but an estimated 230,000 are not, and that’s a good thing.

Decry as many do the intended and unintended consequences of the now-$3 billion program, cash for clunkers became the best stimulus plan going almost overnight.

People are buying cars. Downtrodden salespeople are earning commissions. Excess inventories of qualifying vehicles are disappearing. Hyundai has stepped up production at a Montgomery, Ala., plant, and other manufacturers are considering similar steps.

At Gus Johnson Ford, all the Escapes are gone. Johnson says they cannot be had, anywhere. Another Ford vehicle, the Focus, has been the second-best seller among clunker replacements. Those vehicles and others, perhaps as many as 700,000 by the time the $2 billion added Thursday runs out, will have to be replaced.

And compared to mostly abominable environmental and energy legislation enacted in recent years, “cash for clunkers” looks like a work of genius.

Even though Congress set benchmarks too low for some vehicles, analysis of the vehicles sold so far estimate their overall fuel economy increased 60 percent compared with the clunkers that were surrendered. Their mileage is also 20 percent better than that of other new vehicles sold. People are trading trucks for cars.

But the program’s biggest asset is simplicity. Car buyers understand – maybe too well – the value of incentives. Deals based on factory invoice, employee discount and the phases of the moon have become the sales tool of last resort for Detroit in recent years. They sold cars, but did not address the industry’s fundamental ills the way the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler seemingly have.

When the incentives lapsed, sales swooned.

Johnson says “cash for clunkers” is not “pulling ahead” future sales like other incentives. He can live with whatever letdown does occur when the program hits the end of the road.

“This, truly, to me, has done what it was supposed to do,” Johnson says.

No Aerostars turned in so far, he adds. Friends who have them will not give them up.

I guess one man’s clunker is another man’s workhorse.