'Clunkers' program closes with computer crash

The smash "Cash for Clunkers" program came to the end of the road at 8 last night, and even earlier at several dealerships throughout the region.

Many made a final frenetic push to sell new cars as they crammed through the necessary paperwork to be reimbursed for the consumer credits.

The $3 billion program (also known as the Car Allowance Rebate System) offered buyers discounts of $3,500 or $4,500 to trade in older cars and trucks for new, more fuel-efficient vehicles. By early yesterday, more than 625,000 dealer transactions worth $2.58 billion in rebates had been recorded, according to U.S. Transportation Department data.

High drama preceded the program's curtain call: The tedious task of filing forms electronically snarled when the government's Web site crashed temporarily. About 20,000 dealers nationwide, many with multiple franchises, participated in the program, and many were feverishly trying to log on yesterday to meet the original 8 p.m. deadline.

Acknowledging the glitches - but denying a request from the National Automobile Dealers Association to postpone the date to Aug. 31 - the Transportation Department announced in the afternoon that it would extend until noon today only the deadline for dealers to file reimbursement applications with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The 8 p.m. Monday sales deadline stood.

Several local dealers, including McCafferty Auto Group, which owns four franchises on Lincoln Highway in Langhorne, stopped selling cars under the program at 5 p.m. Saturday, fearing some deals would be rejected and kicked back too late to fix.

"There's the uncertainty. We're nervous. We want to get paid," said president Todd Buch, whose dealerships closed on 311 "Clunkers" deals all together - 94 of them Friday and Saturday.

At Peruzzi Nissan in nearby Fairless Hills, the "Clunkers" deals were halted at midnight Friday. On Saturday, when the dealership was closed, six sales agents came in just to do "Clunkers" paperwork.

"I love the stimulus it's been for the industry," executive manager Robert J. Seidenberger said yesterday, "but it's just been a miserable way of processing the deals."

Seidenberger said his dealership had sold 70 to 80 new cars under the program since its July 24 debut.

"This has been the most stressful time, and the most exciting time in this dealership," he said. "We're owed close to $400,000 by the government. We've maybe been paid $12,000 for three deals, and we've entered paperwork expeditiously since Day 1."

By early yesterday afternoon, Thomas Raiker's Phillies T-shirt was drenched as he labored to make a deal before the deadline at Gary Barbera's Chryslerland in Northeast Philadelphia.

Unable to turn up the title to the clunker - a white 1995 Lincoln Continental with 139,000 miles - he wanted to trade in for a 2009 electric-blue Chevy Aveo LT, Raiker made a mad dash home at noon.

He virtually ransacked his Torresdale dwelling for an hour and a half until he found what he needed.

"I'm very happy and relieved," said Raiker, 45, while wiping the sweat from his brow as he was officially declared the dealership's final "Clunkers" customer just before 2 p.m.

After Raiker sealed the deal on his new Chevy, five sales agents spent the remainder of the day behind computers, typing in reimbursement information for about 76 "Clunker" transactions.

"There's a lot of confusion among dealers," said general manager Geno Barbera.

He had brought three guys in on overtime Saturday, and all they did was process paperwork until 10 p.m. Same thing Sunday.

"When you present something that's not clean or clear-cut, there's questions," Barbera said. "And when you get someone on the help line, they're not always sure of the answer, and you can't get an immediate answer. . . . Then you add the computer crashing, it takes a long time to do something."

Last night's sales deadline was announced after it became apparent that the government's "Clunkers" appropriation would run out early yet again.

So popular was the program that the original $1 billion allotment was exhausted within a week. Congress rushed to push through an additional $2 billion before leaving for its summer recess, in anticipation that the money would last until Labor Day, but that prediction was way off, as well.

Droves of prospective buyers who called yesterday to ask whether they still had time to make a deal had to be turned away, several dealers in the region said.

"Some people are disappointed," said Domenic Visco, general sales manager at Mall Chevrolet in Cherry Hill, as he tagged a row of clunkers at the back of the lot, to distinguish them from used cars.

Those clunkers, including a black 1991 Ford F250 truck with 98,000 miles on it, were bound for a junkyard, where their motors would be destroyed with sodium silicate, or liquid glass.

Visco said would-be customers wandered in yesterday, only to be told they were about a day and a half late.

"They'd ask, 'Is the program still going?'

"I just tell them truth," Visco said. "We stopped on Saturday."

As it neared 8 last night, dealers completed the last of the "Clunker" deals. Many were still complaining of major computer problems.

"We shut it down," said Mike Hammond, as he closed the Conicelli Honda dealership in Conshohocken, one of five he manages in the region. "Some were very happy that they got in.

"But others were not as fortunate," he said. "At least 12 people went home very unhappy because we could not process their paperwork in time due to the government computer malfunctions."