The popular Cash for Clunkers program ends Monday, August 24 2009 at 8 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The program is reportedly associated with over 450 thousand trade-ins of lower-mpg vehicles for new vehicles with significantly higher fuel efficiency. It looks like the program is about to exhaust the $3 billion that Congress allocated, so the administration had made this advance announcement to give shoppers a few more days to make their purchases. See the full article for details:

Not All Dealers are Participating

If you are planning to buy a car under the Cash for Clunkers program, check with the dealers you visit before you waste time looking at their deals. The official dealer locator system is located at http://www.cars.gov/dealer-locator

One problem that the program has posed for car dealers is that, in many cases, the dealer works on a margin of about $1,000 and the customer gets the $3,500 or $4,500 credit at time of purchase, while the dealer may need to wait what has turned out to be much longer than expected for reimbursement under the Cash for Clunkers program. As a result, some dealers pulled out of the program.

Nevertheless, the program has stimulated demand for new cars and the Associated Press reported today that GM and Hyundai had stepped up production and paid overtime and recalled workers respectively.

How to See if You Qualify

There are quite a few requirements that you and your old and new car need to meet in order to get the $3,500 or $4,500 credit under this program, and some cars that qualified earlier don’t qualify now. These requirements are maintained at the program’s web page, http://www.cars.gov/faq but there is an official online guide that will let you quickly know whether your trade-in car and new car will qualify for the credit, and how much the credit will be: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/CarsSearchIntro.shtml