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The White House Council of Economic Advisers announced that the Cash for Clunkers program will help boost economic growth by 0.3 to .04 percent in the third quarter. In addition, it is estimated that 42,000 jobs will be saved or created throughout the course of the second half of the year.
On Wednesday, the Department of Transportation reported that the program resulted in the sales of nearly 700,000 automobiles which totaled $2.88 billion in submitted vouchers from dealerships across the country. The program ended this past Monday however car dealers were permitted to submit the paperwork to the government until late last night.
The Toyota Corolla was the most popular new car purchased as Japanese car manufacturers (Toyota, Honda and Nissan) accounted for 41 percent of the total new car sales. All of the top-10 traded-in vehicles were from American automakers, with the Ford Explorer four-wheel-drive being the most popular.
According to the government, 84 percent of the trade-ins were trucks and 59 percent of the new automobiles were passenger vehicles. The new cars purchased through the program helped improve the fuel efficiency by 58 percent as the new cars had an average fuel-efficiency of 24.9 miles per gallon, compared with an average of 15.8 mpg for trade-ins.
