As some of you know, my wife and I are the owners of JealousBrother.com. I only mention that because we made a decision when we embarked on the journey of starting a website/company. We decided we could do without newer vehicles so we could afford the cost of running a major website. Personally I have no problem driving an older car and actually enjoy working on them. What I don’t enjoy is paying more for parts and having a difficult time finding parts. We have two vehicles, a 95 Honda Civic (36 mpg) with 282,000 miles on it and a 94 Honda Civic (35 mpg) with 341,000 miles on it.

When it comes to Honda’s there’s pretty much nothing I can’t fix. I just got done doing an engine swap on my Civic. I purchased a used Japanese engine from an engine importing company for $800. I have a reason for mentioning this. There are so many different companies and industries that are being affected by this waste of US tax dollars. There are unarguably fewer used/older vehicles on the road now due to the “Cash for Clunkers” program which will have a staggering affect on parts suppliers, used car lots, engine importers, auto recyclers, auto parts stores, and middle-moderate-low income households.

I also sit and think about not only the irony of the program but also the hypocrisy. The irony of course being that the group of people it’s going to affect the most is the low income. The hypocrisy being the destruction of perfectly good vehicles. I wonder what the average carbon footprint of manufacturing a vehicle is? Those vehicles could have supplied discount parts to thousands of low income people who go to auto recyclers like U-Pullit. To give an idea of the money you can save by purchasing parts from auto recyclers: Example: New Transmission may cost upwards of 3 to 4 thousand dollars. You can find used transmissions for anywhere between $150 to $350 at a recycler.

Yet another ridiculous result of this program is debt. A big part of America’s problem was Americans taking on too much debt, so what does the government do? They encourage people to get in debt up to their eyeballs (So tax payers go into debt to supply the tax credits and they go into debt to purchase the vehicles). It’s one thing to go into debt to start a business which has the potential to bring serious returns on the investment but it’s another thing entirely to go into debt on something that is going to do nothing but drop in value. I wonder how many of the people taking on these auto loans will end up in default due to job losses? So to sum it up, I’m not a fan of this program and hope to God they put it to an end sooner than later.

WOW, I totally agree with you, Mr. Kazinec! It's a waste of money and a waste of good parts!

Yeah bad idea as always by our lovely Government,why do this? why not work on making health care more affordable so my son can get well instead of waiting to see if health care will pay for the meds he needs to get better no lets do cash for clunkers such a much better idea.

Why waste a good car? I have never had a brand new car and I'm sure it would be nice to have one but I don't desire one. I've always been happy with my used cars and would be so sad to see my car being wasted and thrown away.

I bought my Mustang brand new in 2001 and can't imagine destroying it when there isn't anything wrong with it. That's just wasteful, even if we are trying to create jobs!

Just another govt program that benefits a few and costs the rest of us a lot.