‘Clunker’ data show pickup-for-pickup

[rickaren]

‘Clunker’ data show pickup-for-pickup trades

Posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 5:05 PM EST.(Employee News)

Billed as a way for the government to put more fuel-efficient vehicles on highways, the popular $3 billion “cash for clunkers” program mostly involved swaps of old Ford or Chevrolet pickups for new ones that got only marginally better gas mileage, according to an analysis of new federal data by The Associated Press.

The single most common swap—which occurred more than 8,200 times—involved Ford F150 pickup owners who took advantage of a government rebate to trade their old trucks for new Ford F150s, the news service said. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius, the story said. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg based on engine size and other factors, an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the clunkers, the AP said.

Owners of thousands more large, old Chevrolet and Dodge pickups bought new Silverado and Ram trucks, also with only barely improved mileage in the middle teens, according to AP’s analysis of sales of $15.2 billion worth of vehicles at nearly 19,000 car dealerships in every state. Those deals helped the Ford F150 and Chevy Silverado—along with Ford’s Escape midsize SUV—climb into the Top 10 most-popular vehicles purchased with the government rebates, the article said. The most common truck-for-truck and truck-for-SUV deals totaled at least $911 million, the story said. (Associated Press/The Detroit News)