Comment by kube-system
14 hours ago
The average car that CARS took in was a 1996 model year with 138,000 miles in 2009. Even if we never did that program they'd be long gone by now.
The current crazy pricing is mostly due to supply that was cut off during covid -- those would all be prime used cars today -- but many were never made, so used car pricing is crazy -- and manufacturers have no incentive to create cheap new cars if buyers don't have other options.
There’s cars upwards of 20 years still on the road …
But also the waves overlap so we’d still have about 700k cars in additional supply.
Most cars that are 30 years old with 318,000+ miles are no longer in service, which is what the average cash for clunker car would have today.
And even if they are still on the road they different enough in quality that they are not affecting the resale price of covid era cars. People do not cross shop 2021 cars with 60k miles with 1996 cars with 300k+ miles.