Car dealers here brace for rush
Some St. Louis-area car dealers are thrilled by the boost in sales from the government’s "Cash for Clunkers" program.
Others said they’ll be happy when the government reimburses them for accepting low-value trades for discounts on new vehicles from $3,500 to $4,500.
But all of them are bracing for a crush of customers this weekend trying to beat the Monday-night deadline to cash in on an incentive program that will cost U.S. taxpayers $3 billion.
"It moved a lot of metal and got a lot of low-mileage vehicles off the road and got some high-mileage vehicles on the road," said Chris Adelmann, executive vice president of the St. Louis Auto Dealers Association.
But car dealers in the St. Louis area remain on edge about clunker deals for which they have not yet been reimbursed by the federal government, Adelmann said. That’s despite assurances by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that participating auto dealers will be paid.
"We have 82 clunkers sitting on our lot," said Steve Stiegman, general manager of Newbold Toyota-BMW-Scion in O’Fallon, Ill. "And we’ve been paid for one. So many of the stories that you’re hearing from across the country, we’re seeing the same circumstances."
He added: "In a perfect world, if everyone were getting paid, the dealers would think this program is working."
Car dealer Frank Bommarito said dealers are "tickled to death with the program."
"I don’t know why someone would try to spin it any different," he said free credit report and score. "I trust the government. If you can’t trust your government, who can you trust?"
Several dealers said they had extra staff coming to work this weekend.
"I think it’s going to be a big weekend," said Bommarito. "I think everyone who thinks they’re going to do this are going to come out this weekend."
Because dealers must submit every application to the Transportation Department by Monday night, Stiegman said his dealership will probably stop accepting clunker trades on Saturday.
He said the program has increased sales.
"Some of these people are not necessarily our clientele," he said. "Ours are trading every three to four years, but we’re seeing cars (traded in) from the mid-’90s that we may not usually see."
Mike Jordan, general manager of Bommarito Chevrolet-Mazda here, said the program has been "very successful."
"It got a lot of old cars off the road, it put factory people back to work, suppliers cranked out more supplies and it put people out in the marketplace," he said. "We’ve had a pretty successful year, and this just really augmented it — made it extremely successful."
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