The writing is on the wall, or the door in this case. Scott Honda made the official announcement on Twitter at 11:14 a.m. when we tweeted , "Scott Honda's
last days of accepting Cash for Clunkers are today and Saturday! Do not
wait until Monday! take advantage of this $ now!" with 6 characters to spare.
After the government announced last evening that the hugely popular Car Allowance Rebate System, as it's known by no one, or Cash for Clunkers, as it's known by everyone, will come to a halt on Monday evening at 8 p.m. many dealers had to scramble to decide how they would close out the program. The Monday night deadline is for the digital submission of the deals, a time consuming process that has frustrated many dealers to say the least.
Scott Honda's upper management made the decision to close the books on the program at the end of business Saturday, based purely on the time needed to properly submit these deals in order to get reimbursed by the government.
"There is no doubt we have done more business because of Cash for Clunkers," said Vice President, Duke Scott. "But I am not sad to see the program end and get back to the business of selling cars the old fashioned way."
Currently Scott Honda has been paid on six of the more than 130 "clunker" deals sold since the program launched in July. With a conservative estimate of 30 more deals to be done by tomorrow, that's over $575,000 we have floated, in hopes of a government payback. Scott made the decision to keep our clunkers instead of crushing them, until payment is received so that we can at least guarantee some money for our old, beat up cars if the payments never come.
It is currently, borderline pandemonium on the sales floor as customers stream through the door trying to take advantage of the program before it ends. As one sales person told their customer, "Bring a book, a pillow and a blanket, because it's gonna be a while."
