by Laredo » Mon Aug 10, 2009 1:19 pm
As I understand it the program is aimed at cars that get fewer than 18 mpg to start with, and so, if the idea is to raise the national gas mileage average, disabling engines that are not meeting that standard makes sense to me. It's not meant to make us all happy.
The program appears to have been designed to do several things: jump-start car sales, take as many as possible of the "low-mpg" vehicles off the road as people could afford to trade, and circulate credit/money in the car industry.
It wasn't meant as a boost to the lowest-income group. It was meant to encourage people who could afford to trade cars in the next six to 24 months to go ahead and do that now, and to trade for something with better gas mileage.
If it had been meant to be a boost to low-income folks instead of to car dealers, you could've used the rebate to buy a cheaper car -- i.e. a pre-owned car, as the dealers like to call them. But that wouldn't have had as positive an effect on credit flow and boosting banks' bottom line.
Mopar's what my busted knuckles bleed, working on my 318s...