Owners Rush to Get Cash for Clunkers

SACRAMENTO — “Shot” is how the caller from Burbank described the fuel system in her 20-year-old car. “I was curious about this program because the car’s pretty much dying.”

The program is two weeks old and works like this: Abandon your pollution-spewing car or truck, and get a check from the state for $1,000.

“That would be wonderful,” said the woman, whose car failed a smog check, something that happens roughly 1 million times a year in California, or once per 10 vehicles checked.

Department of Consumer Affairs phone operator Sabrina Cox promised to mail the woman an application, hung up and moved on to the next of 40 callers on hold in the sunny downtown office.

Since July 7, between 550 and 1,000 Californians a day have dialed in to learn more about the most lucrative vehicle retirement program yet offered in California. It is backed by $100 million in the new state budget and expected to last four years.

The goal is to “retire”--crush--50,000 cars and trucks whose emissions are too dirty to meet California requirements. Some of the money, in checks of as much as $500, will be used to aid motorists who decide they want to keep their cars and make the repairs necessary to pass the smog checks.

Last week at Department of Consumer Affairs headquarters, 50,000 crushed vehicles seemed a modest goal. On a single day the department mailed 863 applications to people interested in retiring their vehicles.

“They’re having hopes of an early Christmas,” said Jeffrey Santos, a technical advisor at the information center. Usually he and co-workers in headsets answer questions about barbers, guide dogs, contractors and doctors, in keeping with the department’s varied responsibilities. After July 1, nine operators were added to help handle questions about the cash-for-clunkers program.

The enthusiastic response is a simple lesson in economics and advertising.

When the state offered $450 to motorists willing to abandon their polluting vehicles, as it did from November 1998 until this summer, only 2,000 people cashed in. No radio or television spots touted the program.

Now through August, $2.7 million in radio and television ads (“to put the blue back in our skies . . . “) will tell people how to navigate the paperwork trail that leads to a $1,000 check.

And this time the price seems right, said at least one happy customer.

“There’s a big difference” between $450 and $1,000, said Bita Garcia, an Ontario schoolteacher.

She and her husband, Arthur, got one of the first $1,000 checks last week when they gave a Riverside dismantler the little white 1978 Toyota pickup that had carried Arthur to and from work at Sunkist Orange Products for a dozen years. It failed a smog test, and the mechanic couldn’t guarantee that hundreds of more dollars’ worth of parts and labor would make it pass.

Garcia praised the ease, logic and environmental benefits of the program. “We were really pleased,” she said. “Most of the time you get the shaft.”

The $1,000 check covered all but $250 of the Garcias’ replacement truck, a 1988 Mitsubishi pickup with a smog check certificate.

“We’ve already told a brother-in-law having trouble with his Mazda pickup,” said Garcia. “He’s been putting money into it hand over fist.”

Experts blame 28 million cars and trucks for generating half the pollution that makes Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley some of the smoggiest places in the nation. Just 10% of vehicles, older or poorly maintained, generate most of that pollution. State researchers say that the typical 1982 model spews eight times as much in oxides of nitrogen--ingredients of smog--as the average car built in 1996.

Last week, state regulators emphasized how badly they want these aging clunkers off the road. They issued a report calling the state’s smog check program too lax to eliminate the 110 tons per day of pollutants that California promised federal regulators it would wipe out.

Under the smog check program, Californians periodically take their cars and trucks for tailpipe emission tests, and vehicles that spew too much pollution cannot be registered unless they are repaired.

What’s needed, argues the California Air Resources Board, is a bigger investment in getting “gross” polluters off the road and tightening emission standards to fail many more cars.

Board spokesman Jerry Martin called the new vehicle retirement and repair program “a big step” forward.

“You’re taking some of the dirtiest cars off the road,” he said, “which has got to make a difference.”

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How to Qualify

To reduce air pollution, the state this month began offering $1,000 to motorists willing to give up vehicles that have failed emissions tests. The vehicles are stripped of wheels, radio, tires and fluids and crushed.

To qualify, cars or trucks must have been registered as operable with the state Department of Motor Vehicles for at least the past two years.

The clean-air campaign, called the Consumer Assistance Program, also offers up to $500 to people who want to repair their vehicles to pass smog tests. Consumers must pay the first $100 toward fixing the car or truck. Those who can prove that their household income is at or below 185% of the federal poverty level (for example, a family of four earning less than $31,543 annually) will pay just $20 toward repairs.

Information is available on the Internet at https://www.dca.ca.gov or by phone from the Department of Consumer Affairs, (800) 952-5210, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturdays.