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Cash For Clunkers Program Still Hot With Sales

Car purchasers showed signs of easing after the lunatic rush a week ago but sales were not far from being on the top over the last weekend given the popularity of “Cash for Clunkers” program.

Last week, the senate voted to push in an extra 2 billion dollars into the very notable auto discount program. This shall be good enough to stretch the program till Labor Day. As anticipated, this brought the traffic to a relative halt in terms of arrival at the dealer’s desk. This has been a departure from the trend last week when the buyers rushed to dealers gripped with fear that the program would run short of money.

Yes, the sale of cars hasn’t doubled akin to the weekend prior yet it is 25 to 50 percent in excess of the general fare at many dealers in Los Angeles County. This is a peaking seemingly associated with the clunkers discount. Don Rohde, sales manager at Galpin Ford in North Hills suggested that his group was still quite busy and he is falling short of salesmen to tackle the demand. The dealership had sold as many as 70 new cars over the last weekend. It is lesser than 115 cars a week prior but half as much in excess of sales in past few months. According to Rohde, about 80 to 90 percent of this fresh car sale is owing to the clunker show.

According to Sammy Kobeissi, sales manager at Power Ford in Valencia, the program has been nothing short of amazing and he felt that though not at last week’s position, the clunkers show was still a true winner.  The clunkers program that took off on July 24 provided the car purchasers with a mammoth discount of $ 3500 to $ 4500. This is when they buy gas guzzlers for better and more fuel-friendly vehicles. Till date, 220,000 and more vehicles have already found their way out of dealer’s house via this program providing a much required emancipation to the auto industry. If sales tracker Autodata Corp is to be believed, then the industry has already shoved some 11.2 million units of light trucks and cars to the customers in July. This incidentally is the highest level of sales in last 10 months.

Kobeissi stated that by early parts of Sunday morning, the Ford dealership had sold 18 fresh cars in comparison to 30 over the just culminated weekend. Having said this, the clunkers trade-in was responsible for as much as half of the weekend’s fresh car sales.

At frontier Toyota, Teresa Webber of Stevenson Ranch got close to trading in her 2000 Ford Explorer for a just generated Toyota RAV4. Webber felt that the timely rebate has allowed them to pre-pone their car buying wish that they had slated for 6 months hence. The cumbersome paper formalities and government’s failure in having paid out the rebate money notwithstanding, the program is doing well, according to David O’Brien, general sales manager at Frontier Toyota. He suggested that the program has worked every bit that was asked of it giving people a chance to grab their clunker trade-in and amassing response form public in unprecedented style. The sweet anxiety for the dealers is that they have to really gear up for keeping up with the demand schedule. Nationwide, dealerships have suggested that they have fallen short on some of the more popular vehicles like Toyota Prius, Ford Focus and Dodge Caliber. Rohde summed it up brilliantly saying that “It’s kind of a good problem to have”.