US Scrappage Scheme Has More Government Money

Saturday, 15. August 2009

The American version of our scrappage scheme, called over the pond, ‘cash for clunkers’ proved so popular that they ran out of cash within a week and have just had a second tranche of money approved. According to the New York Times the first $1 billion was used up in the first week and a further $2 billion has just been approved. I covered their scheme a few weeks ago, which offers a much greater incentive to consumers looking to replace their gas guzzling clunker with a slightly less gas guzzling new car. The money all comes from the Government as opposed to our scheme which requires the manufacturers to cough up half the scrappage allowance but the really incredible thing is that when your old car is scrapped, in the US, the scrap value of the car, however small, is added to the Government allowance and not used in place of it. No wonder we are still struggling to use up 10% of the UK Government’s allowance for the scheme. Oh and my information came from the US Department of Transportation. By Graham Hill