Bye-buy cash for clunkers, German style: €5b ($7b) in government money has been gobbled up by Germans who exchanged their 9-years-or-older auto for something new. On Tuesday, there remained money for 16K cars; today, it’s all gone. At 10:14 am, the last application was processed. No more money in the kitty. The program is closed.
Other than the short-lived and underfunded C.A.R.S. boondogglet, the German Abwrackprämie was dextroamphetamine for a sagging market. It surely worked as prescribed. In the first eight months of the year, car sales in Germany rose by 27 percent, reports Das Autohaus. In a market that buys 3 million cars a year, the Abwrackprämie funded 2 million cars, usually bought by people who usually never buy new. Most likely, they’ll never be seen at a new car dealer again. Scary data-dive: Through July, 2,399,381 new cars were registered (data courtesy of the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt) – unthinkable what would have happened without the government money.
Now, Germany is getting ready for cold turkey. Abwrackprämien withdrawal symptoms are expected to manifest themselves as drastically sinking sales, bankrupt car dealers and unemployed workers. The German market is expected to close out the year with slightly less than 4 million cars sold. In 2010, analysts expect a drop to 2.8 million or less.
Although, this cash for clunkers scheme is twaddle (if you subscribe to free market principles, which I don’t), the German government can box clever here.
Whilst the Bangers for Cash (see what I did there?) scheme propped up demand, which otherwise wouldn’t have existed, this should see them through September, by which time, the German elections would have been held. New government (or Frau Merkel’s crew) can then let Vauxhall/Opel fail, and let the hole in the market be filled by Ford, Toyota, Jaguar, Honda etc. Thus, maintaining good sales figures.
P.S. “By-Bye” you mean “Bye-Bye”?
“Kars” you mean “cars”?
“boondogglet” do you mean “boondogglette” (“ette” colloquially used to denote something small, i.e “vignette”.)
“proscribed” you mean “prescribed”?
English as a 2nd language …
“By-Bye” you mean “Bye-Bye”? Fixed
“Kars” you mean “cars”? Intentional
“boondogglet” do you mean “boondogglette” In America, that would be a female small boondoggle…
“proscribed” you mean “prescribed”? Fixed, and I’ll increase my dosage ….
Bangers for Cash (see what I did there?) I did.
{Peter Griffin Voice} And if you think that’s bad, wait until you see how the sales’ numbers plunge in the United States now that Cash for Clunkers is over, and the dealerships become tumbleweed city.
Boondoggle is already a diminutive. You could use boondoggletchen as you use more German in your writing