On Aug 2, 2009, at 7:31 AM, Loren Busch wrote:

> Bad link...
>

New $2 billion in cash for clunkers program gets South Bay dealers  
rockin'
The van had been brown once, back before the fall of the Berlin Wall,  
but after 23 years on the road, its metal skin had finally melted, so  
that it looked as if it had a horrible disease. It had an ugly faded  
spot on the driver's door � where somebody smashed into it while  
parking, but didn't leave a note � and a long, buckled scrape running  
down the length of the 1986 VW Vanagon's right side.

"I bought it new on my son's first birthday," said Ken Arno of  
Fremont. "My wife drove it every day. And when my son was old enough,  
he drove it."

When potential car buyers like Arno heard that subsidies � up to  
$4,500 � were available through the government's "cash for clunkers"  
program, they stormed the nation's auto dealerships. And just as the  
owners of gas guzzlers burned through the program's $1 billion from  
the federal stimulus package, on Friday the House voted to refill its  
coffers with an additional $2 billion infusion.

That's when Arno decided that his junker was a clunker, and that he  
would take advantage of the popular program.

He called his son Daniel, who recently graduated from college. "When I  
told him I was selling it, he hung up on me," Arno recalled Friday,  
jacking the van up one final time so he could salvage a set of wheels  
he'd recently put on the family's magic bus. "There are a lot of  
memories in that van."

(Jim: The son gets it. Dad's an idiot.)

An all-nighter

Before Arno could even begin stripping his van, the House saw a rare  
opportunity to do something the American public wouldn't hate them  
for, voting 316-109 that morning to add new cash to the clunker rebate  
program.

The Senate is expected to take up the legislation next week. Sen. Carl  
Levin, D-Mich., said the Obama administration assured lawmakers that  
"deals will be honored until otherwise noted by the White House."

President Barack Obama said he was encouraged by lawmakers keeping  
alive a program that had "succeeded well beyond our expectations."

No kidding.

At the Toyota dealership on Stevens Creek Boulevard, where Arno had  
turned in his van � and where he works as an IT manager � as many as  
80 clunkers had come rumbling in during the past week. Most of them  
sputtered onto the lot Thursday, when it appeared the program might  
die before their engines did.

"We've been going gangbusters," said Geoff Yeager, general sales  
manager at Stevens Creek Toyota. "After they announced the program was  
going to be suspended, we were here until 2:30 or 3 in the morning,  
and had customers waiting in line to get in."

Because "cash for clunkers" is a government program, it requires  
massive amounts of paperwork, with 11 different documents that need to  
be filled out and scanned before the feds will pay off. "I'm stressed,  
tired and in dire need of a massage," said Heather Dea, the Toyota  
dealership's customer relations manager.

She worked a normal shift Thursday, went home and put her daughter to  
bed, then started working again and kept at it until 2:30 a.m. She was  
back at the dealership at 8 a.m. Friday, making sure every document  
was perfect. Dea was also desperately trying to get a guy named Jimmy  
from sales to give her a neck rub at her desk, but he had run away.  
"We just had sexual harassment training last week," she explained  
ruefully.

Rockin' and rollin'

Some dealers have complained that the government couldn't keep up with  
the thousands of requests for refunds that poured in, and many have  
simply refused to take part in the program. "The federal government  
can't process a simple rebate," thundered Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich,  
one of several House Republicans who blasted the clunker program.  
"I've got dealers who have submitted the paperwork three times and  
have gotten three rejections. What is a dealer supposed to do?"

Yeager conceded that his dealership has yet to see a dime of the  
government's money, which he called "very scary." But he also noted  
that his salesmen have sold about 600 cars this month. "We're rockin'  
and rollin'," he said. "It feels like the olden days. This would have  
been a good solid week back in our heyday. It helped make our July,  
and it's going to get us off to a great start in August. I talked to a  
couple of people who told me if it wasn't for this program, they were  
going to keep driving their 200,000-mile car indefinitely."

There is no way to monitor how many clunkers have been taken off the  
road. The government released no figures, and most dealers didn't want  
to reveal anything that might be useful to competitors. When Susan and  
Kevin Raymond of San Jose went to the Stevens Creek Subaru dealership  
Thursday, ready to trade in their 1996 Dodge Ram truck for an Outback,  
they spent two hours negotiating with a salesman, then told him they  
had a clunker.

"That's when the deal just stopped," Susan Raymond said. "He said,  
'We've taken in some cars, and we don't trust that the federal  
government is going to give us the money for them.' "

On the Toyota crush lot � behind an abandoned Black Angus, where all  
the clunker carcasses were taken before being ground up for scrap �  
Ken Arno's van lowered its weary shoulders to the ground, not far from  
a Jeep whose vanity plate said R8R FAN. A cream-colored Cadillac STS  
still bore an Obama '08 bumper sticker, but it no longer cruised with  
the audacity of hope. It just sat there.