The $1 billion cash-for-clunkers scheme was introduced on 1 July 2009 and ran for seven weeks until 24 August 2009 (although it may well be revived). Did the 'Car allowance rebate scheme' (acronym CARS*, natch) increase overall sales or merely accelerate them, thus leading to an even sharper drop in sales in the months after the scheme ends?
* UPDATE - that CARS link is now defunct. Somebody from Parts Catalog asked me if I could put a link to their website instead. So I did :-)
Matthew has put together a chart, which seems pretty conclusive to me:
Stormlight
3 hours ago
3 comments:
Don't!
the +2.9% record increase in USA retail sales has a very large measure of car sales in it.
Don't burst the bubble. The recession is over, its official.
3 months of negative growth to be in and 1 month of any sort of positive to be out.
Hooray.
Conclusively has increased sales? I (as I've been saying) don't think you can say that. Yes it looks as if we are back where would have been without the scrappage, so that would suggest June/July/August additional sales ARE extra, but we just don't know if Chrysler's down 19% is accurate yet (other reports say it will be more) and of course what happens in October and so on. So I'd say 'looks like it has increased sales' but far too early to tell.
M, maybe I jumped the gun. It looks to me as if it accelerated sales, actually. We'll have to revisit this in October & November.
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