“Now it’s like the ‘clunkers’ program never happened — never existed,” said Evan Kanes, general manager at Glendale Nissan.
Kanes’ dealership had processed 170 sales through the clunkers program, for which it received its final cash rebate Monday, but has sold about half that total since then, he said.
His dealership, which was running low on inventory and rushing to meet the requests of shoppers that had streamed onto the lot, was full of new models Tuesday.
“We were constantly busy,” Kanes said of business during the clunkers program. “We were short-handed so everybody was working twice as hard, which is always nice. Now we have salesmen that are unfortunately not as busy.”
Dealership representatives were waiting for customers to assist Tuesday. Business had dropped off enough to force Kanes to let go of two part-time workers, he said.
As in most other dealerships, sales at Glendale Nissan have fallen to about 30% below last year’s marks.
At Star Ford, the drop-off accounted for a 20% drop from pre-clunkers sales, said Alex Tamez, general manager at the store.
“I think we pulled business forward, definitely,” Tamez said of the decline in activity, which has rebounded since the end of September, he said.
The Car Allowance Recovery System, as the program was formally known, offered car owners a cash rebate toward the purchase of a new car if they traded in their gas-guzzling models.
Congress initially allocated $1 billion for the program, but increased the total allotment to $3 billion after it proved a success.
“What it did was it proved that people out there do have money,” Tamez said. “Not everybody is losing their jobs. Not everybody’s scared to death.”
