Cash for Clunkers nets 700,000 auto sales

The U.S. Treasury is reporting the Cash for Clunkers program netted 700,000 auto sales.

Wow, that's a lot of car for 27 days of sales!

Economic benefits of the program will persist in coming months as carmakers replenishing inventories hire and expand production, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said.

The initiative will boost U.S. third-quarter gross domestic product by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage point and create 42,000 jobs by the end of 2009, according to the CEA’s estimate.

I hope this estimate is simply to replenish sold inventory, but still, looks like a success! (for Japan!)

Associated Press:

Japanese automakers Toyota, Honda and Nissan accounted for 41 percent of the new vehicle sales, outpacing Detroit automakers General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, which had a share of nearly 39 percent. Toyota Motor Corp. led the industry with 19.4 percent of new sales, followed by General Motors Co. with 17.6 percent and Ford Motor Co. with 14.4 percent.

Cars, trucks and SUVs sold in July at an annual rate of 11.2 million vehicles, the first time this year the figure has crept above 10 million. That's still far below the 16 million vehicles sold just two years ago.

For comparison sake, July 2009 auto sales, before the cash for clunkers program including fleet were estimated to be 950,000 units.

Edmunds put June auto sales at 887,000.

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Doing the math

So $3 billion leads to 42k jobs (or $70k a job) and .3-.4 of a percent GDP (which is about $36 billion).
Not a half-bad job of Keynesian stimulus; not perfect, but not bad.

yeah

now those are White House statistics....

It's easy to say cash for

It's easy to say cash for clunkers was a success when you only look at the number of new cars sold. It's a completely different story when you factor in how much business was lost by auto repair shops, auto parts stores, used car dealers and car donation charities. When you look at the big picture, all that happened was we robbed Peter to pay Paul.

more data this helped Japan instead of GM/Chrysler

Financial Times (h/t Calculated Risk):

Underscoring the challenges facing the two companies in the wake of their recent bankruptcy restructurings, the transportation department said that GM models made up 17.6 per cent of the 690,100 vehicles sold under the scheme, while Chrysler accounted for 6.6 per cent of sales.

By contrast, GM’s market share in the first seven months of 2009 was 19.6 per cent, and Chrysler’s 9.6 per cent, according to Autodata, a market-research company.

and even worse, there are projections now to have the lowest sales volume....9M in Sept....

like ...ever....like when there were way less people here....like the 1970's...

oh man, not looking good as a real stimulate effect (unlike the WH stats!)