I’ve never owned a new vehicle, my 1985 chevrolet 1/2 ton was past it’s prime. With cash for clunkers, I knew this was my time.
I thought I wanted a Dodge, I went to my local dealer, I explained to the salesman my wants.
I told them I wanted a 1/2 ton, 4x4, didn’t care about the cab but wanted a short bed, didn’t care about the color but wanted a dark interior, needed enough power to tow my 19 foot aluminum boat. Asked the salesman to find me a truck to fit my needs.
He called me back the next day, He had a 2009 Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab SLT, A/T, 4X4, and a 5.7 Hemi W/ only 8 miles and Inferno Red in color.
Heres where I told the salesman, that thats the truck, except I didn’t care if it was a Dodge, I had planned to contact the local Ford dealer, Chevy dealer, and GMC dealer.
since we didn’t have to hassle about my trade in value, the govt. already set that, I told him to give me his best price, and not expect me to haggle, because I wasn’t going to, I was just going to compare, what I expected to be the best price for whatever dealership found me the truck that best suited my needs.
He took the truck up the chain of command and explained he needed to get a great price to make a sale.
I looked at Lithia.com, and searched all of Oregon state and found 3 trucks in the state with the same options as mine, and only one the same color, all for $37,000- to over $38,000.
Since the experts say that more and more people are researching and making decisions on line, prior to even walking into a dealership, I was extremely surprised when the salesman called me on day 3, and told me the truck was mine for $24,000, of course I bought it, and no I never contacted any other dealership.
The idea is to buy a vehicle that gets good mileage,good to me is 35+. Whats the mileage that trucks going to get locked up in 4wd pulling that boat with all accesories on a 20+ mile dirt road to get to the lake (which is not uncommon here in Southern Az)? Bet the gov. did not test in those conditions but thats how you are going to use the truck.
So our government is partialy funding the purchase of a receational vehicle but crushing vehicles that could be used by people that don’t want to spend so much on a TRANSPORTATION vehicle.
sounds correct.
I have to agree, I am really disappointed in the truck provisions in the CARS program. It really seems to be a way to encourage small businesses to replace perfectly good trucks with newer ones that only get a slightly better fuel mileage.
Now, I don’t blame anyone who can and does take advantage of this program. Hell, it’s their tax dollars, too. But, I’d like to see them allow cars older than 25 years, and allow cars of any MPG to be eligible if the replacement gets 10+ MPG better. And, I’d eliminate some of the truck provisions, or at least tighten up the requirements.
The new truck will still burn roughly the same amount of gas as the old one.
However, the new truck will produce much less pollution than the 1985 truck.
Pollution in terms of CO2?. Where is that CO2 going too (from the new truck) if its not going into the air. I do agree HC and CO and NOX will be lower with the new truck but I thought they only way to reduce CO2 emissions was to burn less fuel overall or trap and store the CO2 before it gets in the air.
Yeah, CO2 is a product of full combustion, but the EPA has been rattling its saber about banning CO2. Go figure.
Perhaps there’s a way of breaking up the molecules, trapping the carbon (perhaps in a dispozable filter?) and releasing either oxygen or diatomic oxygen out the exhaust. While triatomic oxygen is ozone, to th ebest of my knowledge diatomic oxygen is not considered a pollutant by the EPA…yet.
I’ll agree that’s kind of nuts to be able to buy a huge truck like that on an “environmental” program, but if his old '85 had a V8, this new truck probably has at least 3 MPG on the old one. If you look at going from 12 to 15 MPG in terms of the reduction in amount of fuel to drive X miles, you can see that that’s a pretty good improvement.
And Co2 emissions are more or less a direct function of fuel consumption.