Get $4500 for your Q?

[Mint Q45A]

Interesting article on the news today:

http://articles.moneycentral.m....aspx



...The obvious winners would be the owners of virtually worthless older cars who had plenty of cash or the ability to obtain financing....

[miata007]

No quite sure if we Q owners would qualified.I read another article on Edmunds and they say the car has to be less than 18MPG. In this article is says 18 MPG or less.

For Y33 (1997), the combined hiway and city mpg is 18.

I am not sure what the G50 mpgs are.

007

[qship96]

Did you click through those pictures? They show the 1992 Q45 as a clunker worth less than $550 trade in and no longer "posh".......funny the similar year Lexus LS400 is not included on their list of "clunkers"

[MinisterofDOOM]

Instead of buying my Q for 4500 to help me into a small boring car, why not just subsidize my fuel consumption with about $2000 and keep a perfectly reliable car on the road?

[Q451990]

I'm not sure, but I think this would only apply to purchases from the big three. General Obama Motors, Chrysler Obama Motors, and Furd. So trade my Q for a K-car... no thanks.

Heath

[Mint Q45A]

1992 Infiniti Q45 sedan

This one-time luxury vehicle isn't so posh today. It gets just 17 mpg and is usually worth less than $550 on a trade-in, assuming it was driven an average of 12,000 miles a year. Infiniti lovers may want to opt for a G37 instead; it gets the best gas mileage of all the 2009 models.

[miata007]

What kind of replacement vehicle would you (or anyone) get today to take advantage of this offer?

Given how the economy has affected us like most family in America, I would go for something economical. Here's my options.

Accord LX (25+ MPG)Altima (27+ MPG)Versa (30MPG)

007

[qship96]

Honda Insight

[Mint Q45A]

Here's one more that qualifies:

Along with being one of the fastest and most expensive cars on the road today, the $350,000 Lamborghini Murcielago is also the king of the gas guzzlers. Its 640 horsepower engine sucks down a gallon of gasoline for every 8 miles it travels in the city and 13 on the highway for a nice round EPA combined rating of 10 mpg.

[qship96]

We use to have a 1970 Cadillac Eldorado with the 8.2 liter V8....8mpg in city, 10 on highway!

[Q45tech]

With the new 45 MPG rules V8 and V6 will be things of the past in new cars.CURRENT GAS GUZZLER TAX Unadjusted MPG (combined)* Tax at least 22.5 No tax at least 21.5, but less than 22.5 $1000 at least 20.5, but less than 21.5 $1300 at least 19.5, but less than 20.5 $1700 at least 18.5, but less than 19.5 $2100 at least 17.5, but less than 18.5 $2600 at least 16.5, but less than 17.5 $3000 at least 15.5, but less than 16.5 $3700 at least 14.5, but less than 15.5 $4500 at least 13.5, but less than 14.5 $5400 at least 12.5, but less than 13.5 $6400 less than 12.5 $7700

[Infinitiguy19]

I think its time we got a new goverment because these last 8 years have been nothing but hell.

So we are supposed to trade in (Have our cars shredded) so we can get a measly 5K? A good Q45 on NICO can get more than that.

f*** THIS BILL

[quote]We use to have a 1970 Cadillac Eldorado with the 8.2 liter V8....8mpg in city, 10 on highway![quote/]

Why would you give up such a safe vehicle?
Modified by Paul Wall at 10:19 PM 5/19/2009

[Mint Q45A]

And I bet you it didn't run quite as a Lambo Murcielago....

[Mint Q45A]

Or you can buy a beat up Q for a couple of hundred dollars and trade it for $4500 towards the purchase of the brand new Insight....

[MinisterofDOOM]

What kind of replacement vehicle would you (or anyone) get today to take advantage of this offer?

Given how the economy has affected us like most family in America, I would go for something economical. Here's my options.

Accord LX (25+ MPG)Altima (27+ MPG)Versa (30MPG)

007

No way on earth would I ever downgrade to a generic boring car just to save money on gas. Especially since buying a new car isn't saving money on gas, it's spending money on a new car. Keeping my Q running well and paying for the 17mpg I get is cheaper than buying a 30mpg Versa for $17k. And I get the double bonus of ENJOYING the drive in my Q, something I could never get from a Versa.

[TellarHK]

I wouldn't trade my Q for anything short of a decent-shape 1971-73 Mustang Mach 1 in running and road-legal condition. However, I don't see what the uproar is about with everyone whining about this.

Our auto industry in this country has been junk for decades, and they have proven themselves completely and utterly unable to fix the situation without being forced. When they had just a few years left, the government was being run by a bunch of oil baron wannabes with absolutely no interest in trying to force car companies to make what people really want, -better- cars. The only thing that got them into fighting shape at all in the last few years, was the Japanese and Korean competition. Now that those avenues of competition have started to get just as slack and lazy as the American industry was, the "Big Two-Point-Five" simply had no reason to work at it.

The government, which started this whole debacle under Bush, had to decide whether or not it wanted to have a few million people added to the jobless rolls, or a few hundred thousand. Considering the slump we're already in, the complete and utter lack of investor confidence that would arise from such a rapid systematic failure of an entire industry, the best option they had was to throw some money at the problem.

In return, they're giving the industry the tough love it needs. And in the process, they're going to try and help get some of the country's lamer cars off the road. If anything, we're going to see a sudden drop in the number of real crapboxes on the road. But, not a lot of Americans are in a position to buy a car right now no matter what the benefit is. So it won't be critical. Will the Government's standards require more efficient lineups? Sure. But the automakers think it's doable. Even Ford apparently thinks that, and they haven't had a desperate hand out yet.

These companies -can- make good, efficient cars. The technology is here and has BEEN here for decades, they just haven't bothered to use it because they've been making cheap, crappy SUV's for soccer moms that thought a minivan or a station wagon they could actually drive was somehow safer than an SUV they can't. The biggest problem is that the market here got screwed over by a fairly out of whack system designed to treat SUV's as primarily business or work "light trucks", with corresponding regulations and taxing. The system just wasn't ready for 7 person kiddie haulers sitting two feet off the ground and getting 12 miles a gallon. So they got built on cheaper frames, with less focus on -actual- safety because "It's a truck!" and discounted all to hell by the car companies because it's cheaper to build a new SUV on the same chassis the bread-and-butter F150 or Chevy Avalanche is built on for actual company use.

The rise of the SUV did nothing good for anyone, not even the car companies. Because it made them slow and unable to adapt. My hope is that this 4500 credit works to get a bunch of those 93-2000 Explorers off the road. You can't drive far in some seasons, without seeing one of those in a ditch someplace.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I don't really think you understand the point of the SUV or even trucks in general for that matter. Most of what you complain about with SUVs is EXACTLY what makes them appealing. And that's exactly the thing: not MADE, MAKES. Present tense. There is still a NEED for trucks. Not want. Not cool-factor. An un-changing, ever-present, definite NEED.Just because everyone has gone into fuel panic mode doesn't mean people no longer need workhorses. Look around. People are still buying brand new full-size trucks AND SUVs. If the SUV was such a mistake and totally irrelevant, why are people still buying them despite the combined efforts of their newfound uncoolness AND high fuel prices? And better yet, why is it the JAPANESE, not the Americans, who are entering the game LATE, well into the fuel crisis, and profiting from it? Don't you think Toyota would stop selling the Sequoia if it was totally irrelevant and unpopular?

Everyone I've ever known who has owned an Explorer has loved it. They're GREAT trucks. Of course most people I know who buy trucks aren't buying them for going to the grocery store but for real truck work. Still, that just reinforces my point.

Car-based SUVs are a sacrifice, and a foolish one. They're a tradeoff of capability and production cost for efficiency. The problem is that the idea of the SUV is NOT efficiency, it's capability. People who NEED a workhorse can't make do with a stupid Chevy Traverse. They need a ladder frame and real payload capacity and a transmission that's actually up to some stresses. GM is completely foolish for killing off the Trailblazer. It was an excellent workhorse SUV with great powerplant options that you could really beat on. The Traverse is not a viable replacement. The fact that everyone is afraid of crappy fuel economy does not alter the laws of physics! The role for the Trailblazer still exists, and the Traverse can not possibly fill it.

As for adaptation: you don't fix what isn't broken. Trucks are trucks. They will always be trucks. The purpose has not, does not, will not change. HUGE improvements have been made (consumer trucks can tow SO MUCH MORE than they used to) but they're not readily obvious because to evolve the truck out of it's purpose would be self-defeating.

CARS are an entirely different matter. TRUCKS are what kept the American brands going because of exactly what I've said here. They do them well, do them right, and do them affordably without need for lots of investment in unnecessary adaptation for the sake of adaptation. That HELPED the causes of the cars, it did not hurt them. What harmed their car product lines was the ignorance of their leadership. Trucks are not to blame, bad decisions are.

[TellarHK]

Some people need them, most people just think they do. For decades, people were just fine with station wagons and minivans, or pickup trucks until SUV's were suddenly the new, cool way to get your kids to school wrapped in all the comforts of home with only a 50/50 chance of rolling over into a ditch if you take a corner wrong.

I exaggerate, but sadly, not nearly as much as I could be.

If you're working from your SUV, take it off-road, have four kids and live someplace where you've got snow on the ground for five months out of the year? Sure, a capable, quality SUV is something you could probably use. But if you've got two kids, maybe a dog, and live someplace where you don't get snow to the point where roads get sketchy for longer than it takes the first plow to hit the road? You don't need an Explorer, you just think you do.

People are buying trucks because there -are- people who need trucks, and there always will be. You say most of the people you know who have trucks actually use them? Great. I'm not complaining about them. I'm complaining about a system that encouraged the people who don't need, and can't -drive-, trucks to buy trucks because they somehow feel safer in them.

I'm not complaining about pickups, at all. As far as I'm concerned, 99% of people who buy pickups do it because they need them. Though I do know at least one college girl who had a big pickup she got from her mother that she fell asleep while driving and totalled. Just to run out and buy another big full-size pickup for her college commute of 2 miles.

The problem isn't trucks, and if you think so, you completely misread my entire rant. The problem is people turning trucks into minivans, and companies ignoring advancement in other vehicles because it was cheaper to make SUV's out of truck frames. When the bottom fell out of the economy, this shortsightedness is what all but killed those companies. I actually predicted a gas crunch in 2005 back in 2000, simply and solely based on the rise of SUV's, because they depreciate so quickly that poorer people wind up with them. I was off by a couple years, and the cause wasn't quite right, but I'm sure those factors made things a lot uglier than they would have been without SUV's guzzling up so much fuel.

And people are buying SUV's again, because people are short-sighted. They see $3, 4, 5, 6,000 or more "off" on an SUV because dealers have to sell them at rock-bottom prices because they're completely screwed and hoping not to be killed off (and look how well that worked for 2,000 franchisees these past couple weeks) and people think that's a bargain. It's not, but they can't be convinced of that. Because SUV's are safer, "for the children".

Again, I'm not complaining about trucks. Only SUV's that people buy in huge quantities, to make milk runs in perfect weather across town with a couple rugrats or less, in tow.

...Though the one person that almost sideswiped my Q today was driving some kind of compact minivan thing. I was stuck between other cars and just -watched- her, for about ten seconds, start looking like she was starting to pull into my lane right in front of my passenger door. Fortunately she jerked back into her own lane just as she finally -looked- when crossing the line.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I see, yeah I kind of misunderstood. Seeing the wifey driving her husband's lifted, fender-flared, mud-bogger-shod Excursion for nothing more than a run down the block to the grocery store for eggs is kind of irritating (especially since most of the people driving those trucks can't even operate a Civic properly, let alone something that weighs 7000lb and has blind spots the size of one of Mars's moons and bumpers higher than my side mirrors.

[maxnix]

Instead of buying my Q for 4500 to help me into a small boring car, why not just subsidize my fuel consumption with about $2000 and keep a perfectly reliable car on the road?

Wow! What a concept!

I pay an extra $2K annually to drive a luxury V8 instead of suffering in some beater 4 cylinder that is depreciating rapidly and costs more to insure!

[maxnix]

I wouldn't trade my Q for anything short of a decent-shape 1971-73 Mustang Mach 1 in running and road-legal condition.

Been there, wouldn't do it for a Boss 429 or even a Boss 302 in showroom condition, at least not to drive. I'd auction it off to some old fogey reliving their junior high school wet dreams about the girl they never got and the car they never had.

It's a crude car, just as the 2010 Mustangs are.

[Rex]

We have a politics section, that's where this type of discussion belongs.

Please note it has it's own set of "rules".