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Old gas-guzzlers for new gas-guzzlers

Cash-for-Clunkers was touted as a hugely successful federal government initiative -- both economic stimulus and environmental bonus.

Or maybe not, says today's AP story.

(Associated Press continues to do excellent work lately testing claims from Washington against reality.)

In more than 8,000 transactions, vehicle owners simply swapped an old Ford F-150 pickup truck for a new one.

"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," AP notes.

And this was subsidized with tax dollars.

On that point, an analysis by Edmunds.com found the government spent $24,000 per vehicle under the program.

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Posted by Doug Clark on Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 9:04 am

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Andrew Clark

November 5, 2009 - 10:27 am EST

Just a quick math note: replacing a car that gets 14 mpg for one that gets 16mpg is a 12.5% reduction in fuel use. That's huge.

This sort of ex-post evaluation is important though. As a stimulus it did seem to be very successful. It got a lot of money out into the economy very fast.