Life After Clunkers
By: Mitch Carr
Updated: September 17, 2009
The government's Cash for Clunkers program ended August 24th. Hundreds of deals were struck in the Lubbock area and around the nation.
During the program, more than 700,000 cars were traded in for nearly $ 3 billion in government rebates.
But now with the program over, sales have deflated to pre-clunker levels.
Jimmy Stallings is the general manager at Gene Messer Ford. He local says the big boost was worth it.
"You can actually look back and say as a dealership, as a manufacturer, as a company we sold x amount of cars that we don't think we would have sold had we not had this program. And there's not many things that you can do, not many ways that you can advertise, not many programs that I have that can track that kind of data," Stallings said.
Stallings says the government has paid back most of the rebate money. He says he expects to receive the rest of the money by October.
