Warning: some readers may find this thread disturbing

[500SEC]

ST. CLOUD — So long, 1FTRW07L61KA12455, and thanks for your eight years and 178,662.7 miles of service.

That's the Vehicle Identification Number for a 2001 Ford F-150 SuperCrew Lariat pickup — one of nearly 700,000 vehicles traded in under the federal government's "cash for clunkers" program that ended last month. As a result, the truck must die.

The F-150 was one of about 40 clunkers acquired by Starling Chevrolet in St. Cloud. Under the rules of the Car Allowance Rebate System, a consumer traded in an older vehicle on a new one and received up to $4,500 toward the down payment.

The government has been slow in paying dealers, so most of them, including Starling Chevrolet, have been storing the clunkers, waiting on the individual payments to arrive before sending the cars and trucks to the salvage yard.

Last week, Starling received the government payment for the F-150, so its number came up.

Starling mechanic Chris Moon drove the truck, which still ran remarkably well, from its spot on the last row of the dealership, between two other clunkers, a Chevrolet TrailBlazer and a Chevrolet S-10.

It would be the second car "killed" today, the first being a yacht-sized Lincoln Continental that, Moon says, "did not go down without a fight."

Moon pulls the F-150 into the service bay, raises it on a lift and drains the oil. He lets it back down, opens the hood and pours in the engine-killing poison — two quarts of sodium silicate, or "liquid glass." He drives the truck to a separate spot on the back row, and the process begins.

Regulations say that Moon must keep the engine running at about 2,000 rpm, about double idle speed. After a few minutes, the liquid in the sodium silicate begins boiling off, and the remainder of the sandlike substance gets hotter and hotter, bonding itself to the internal moving parts that oil would normally lubricate.

Soon, a half-dozen other mechanics come to watch. Moon has spent 10 years at Starling trying to save ailing vehicles, and the idea of destroying a healthy one makes him and the other mechanics uncomfortable.

After six minutes, the big V-8 engine is laboring. But, Moon says from behind the tilt steering wheel, "The air conditioner is still blowing cold air."

After seven minutes and 51 seconds, the engine seizes. A wisp of smoke rises from the custom K&N air filter.

1FTRW07L61KA12455 is dead.

"And another one bites the dust," Moon says. "That was a nice truck."

The next day, a flatbed wrecker arrives from Preston's Auto Parts and Salvage Yard in Kissimmee. The F-150 is delivered to a holding area. Preston's co-owner, James Glover, looks it over.

If Moon is the reluctant assassin, Glover is the undertaker.

He pays Starling and a couple of other dealerships $50 each for the clunkers. After plucking off a few nondamaged powertrain parts, such as the alternator and air-conditioning compressor, he will remove the locked-up engine and place it in a pile with other clunker engines, and they will be crushed.

Then the truck will be rolled to the back of the yard, put up on a lift, and several workers will disassemble it.

Tires and wheels? Worth maybe $125, Glover says. Catalytic converter? $65. Transmission? $125.

And there are the doors, fenders, windows, rear axle, leather seats, air bags — all told, Glover says, he might be able to get $1,000 out of the truck, though that could take months, even years, of waiting for people to show up wanting all the right pieces.

"I could have gotten $1,500 for that engine," Glover says. "Too bad."

The one-owner truck hit the road Jan. 15, 2001, and spent its entire life in the Orlando area, according to AutoCheck.com, a research site.

A top-of-the-line Lariat model, it had an optional 5.4-liter, 260-horsepower V-8 engine, leather upholstery, adjustable pedals, air bags, anti-lock disc brakes and a power moon roof. The truck could carry six passengers and tow 8,000 pounds.

The owner traded it in for a 2010 Chevrolet Equinox SUV, with a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine. The Equinox is EPA-rated at an overall 26 mpg, compared with the F-150's 15 mpg, resulting in the maximum $4,500 credit from CARS.

Was it a good deal? Maybe. Kelly Blue Book (kbb.com) appraises the truck's trade-in value at an optimistic $5,525. Edmunds.com, a competing auto Web site, appraises its trade-in value at a pessimistic $2,093. The actual real-world value is somewhere in between.

The CARS program sold 690,114 new vehicles, which means there are that many running cars and trucks being destroyed across the country, and that many vehicles taken out of the used-car market. What impact this will have on the salvage industry and the used-car market remains to be seen.

But for clunkers like 1FTRW07L61KA12455, it really doesn't matter.

"It's sort of like people dropping off an elderly pet at the animal shelter," one mechanic said. "The owners can tell themselves it will find a good home, but they really don't want to know what happens to it after they leave."

Sentinel Automotive Editor Steven Cole Smith can be reached at scsmith@orlandosentinel.com, at 407-420-5699, or through his blog at Enginehead.com.

Out with the old ...
The clunker: 2001 Ford F-150 SuperCrew Lariat.

Engine: 5.4-liter, 260-horsepower V-8.

Base price in 2001: $27,670.

EPA-rated average fuel mileage: 15 mpg.

Fuel cost for one year, as estimated by the EPA: $2,441

Its replacement: 2010 Chevrolet Equinox.

Engine: 2.4-liter, 182-horsepower four-cylinder.

Base price: $23,185.

EPA-rated average fuel mileage: 26 mpg.

Fuel cost for one year, as estimated by the EPA: $1,409.

Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel

[Falc'man]

"Glover is the undertaker."

We knew that.

/In the name of economics they've killed more than just cars.

[Burnout]

Shame that....ruining a nice Effie. :

[tranquilized]

That was an interesting read. I was under the impression that program was aimed at really old cars, not 2001 model ones. Considering all the resources that go into building a car, it hardly seems sustainable practice to scrap such a relatively new car just to save a few litres of fuel...

[XD 351 Ute]

Yep, the throw-away society is REALLY environmentally friendly isn't it???
Forest for the trees...............

Ed

[naddis01]

Sorry but that is just rediculous. What would that be worth here in Australia? How is a 2001 model considered a clunker?

[imugli]

Originally Posted by naddis01

Sorry but that is just rediculous. What would that be worth here in Australia? How is a 2001 model considered a clunker?

Have you tried selling one at auction?

[Bad Bird]

Originally Posted by naddis01

How is a 2001 model considered a clunker?

In the US, anything over about 5 years old is considered pretty old.

[Windsor220]

Originally Posted by Bad Bird

In the US, anything over about 5 years old is considered pretty old.

I wonder what they think of people here driving around in EA/VNs?

[InfernoSR]

What a touching story...

[4VCLEVO]

Sad story, I can't belive that a 2001 model f150 is old over there. It would be worth good money here.

[prydey]

what is the point behind rendering the engine useless? why not try to sell that as well?

[madmelon]

What a moronic thing to do. Yet another poorly thought through political stunt to "help battle the global financial crisis".

I'm sure we're all aware of the various environmental campaigns out there, one of them being reduce (which seems to be followed in some instances), RE-USE and RECYCLE. I've no doubt there would be some form of economic benefit to RE-USING the so called clunkers' engines in vehicles which need it and then properly RECYCLING them after being dismantled, rather than crushing it and throwing the whole lot in a furnace and wasting loads of energy trying to get rid of impurities that could have been easily removed eariler.

Ignorance is bliss.

[FERG_51]

Im a mechanic. I couldnt bring myself to do it.

[pottery beige]

RIP F-TRUCK.. A juvenile cut down in her prime.. Such a sad sad waste..

[calais]

Apsolutely ridiculous. No other way to describe this sort of thing.

[Iggypoppin']

What is the point in all this... The gov should look at what they have done, essentially burn away a few billion, because all they did was technically buy some cars...and throw them away!! The resale might not have been great, but recouping some of the outlay is better than out and out destruction... I can see now why the country is in dire need of help. Such wastefulness here is unheard of. Not until the car is written off or seized from age is it dumped, and even then it's dumped at a wreckers which creates income for wrecking yard employees, and parts for other people. America, no disrespect intended, should look at the way other countries re-use things, and could learn a little bit...

[flappist]

Yet you all have no problem in chucking out old phones or computers.....

You do realise that if we also dumped cars at 8 years old the price of new ones would be almost half what it is now.

But of course all the "classic" EAs and VNs would be gone forever and it would be soooo terrible....

[madmelon]

Originally Posted by 76txcoupe

America, no disrespect intended, should look at the way other countries re-use things, and could learn a little bit...

...could learn alot about alot of things, not just recycling.

[Iggypoppin']

Yes that too, but I didn't want to get too far into it.


Perhaps so flappist, but wouldn't that have an adverse effect on the classic car market, particularly the ability of people to restore or replicate certain vehicles? Two pronged attack but lower car prices would be nice.

[Dezza]

Originally Posted by flappist

Yet you all have no problem in chucking out old phones or computers.....

You do realise that if we also dumped cars at 8 years old the price of new ones would be almost half what it is now.

But of course all the "classic" EAs and VNs would be gone forever and it would be soooo terrible....

I know when my Dad was young (eg. late 60s,70s), he had a Customline paddock bomb. He chopped the roof off it and thrashed it around the paddock, not knowing that all these decades later the Customline would become valuable. When you think about it, at that point it was about the same age as an EA is now. I'm not saying the EA is suddenly going to be worth a lot of money, but these cars are still worth preserving.

[geckoGT]

Originally Posted by flappist

Yet you all have no problem in chucking out old phones or computers.....

You do realise that if we also dumped cars at 8 years old the price of new ones would be almost half what it is now.

But of course all the "classic" EAs and VNs would be gone forever and it would be soooo terrible....

What do you mean, all those damn phones are still hanging around our place.

Seriously though what a stupid idea. Lets buy your older non fuel efficient car off you so you can buy a newer more fuel efficient one. Then we will burn heaps of dinosaur blood crushing and burning it and eventually turn it into landfill, all 20 years before it will normally die a natural death.

Then because of this scheme we will have to make 690,000 new vehicles to replace the old ones, which will require vastly more oil and emit vastly more greenhouse gasses in their production than all these vehicles added together :

[mik]

surely the main purpose is to get cars moving again on production lines and keeping jobs and the economy motoring along if i`m not mistaken(excuse the pun), and a spin off also would`nt this make the more late model 2nd hand cars have a higher resale?. it can`t be a bad thing or can it?

[torbirdie]

Originally Posted by mik

surely the main purpose is to get cars moving again on production lines and keeping jobs and the economy motoring along if i`m not mistaken(excuse the pun), and a spin off also would`nt this make the more late model 2nd hand cars have a higher resale?. it can`t be a bad thing or can it?

Make no mistake, it is only a move to keep the car production lines rolling and keep Americans in work it is nothing to do with saving emissions. Its is an environmentally negative move that will not address the long term problems facing American manufacturing.

If it were about reducing emissions, the only condition would be that the car is "disabled", but here you have to actually buy another one to qualify!

Its all about how much emissions the vehicles create, the best way to moderate that is price of the fuel that goes in it. 50cents/litre for petrol there, off course they all drive around in 2.5 tonne suvs and think nothing of driving 30+ miles a day.

Sure you can make regulations about how efficient the vehicle has to be, but at the end of the day it doesnt matter whether the carbon dioxide comes out of a vehicle that gets 15mpg and travels 15miles a day or out of one that gets 30mpg that travels 30miles a day, its controlling the total amount that matters.

make the cost of fuel actually mean something to the average American and the car industry will create more efficient vehicles all by itself, forget the crap about they need time to adjust to the new climate and that the asian manufacturers have the jump on them with smaller cars, to use the Dodge expression......"you can do it"!......

So Im saying they should pay some more fuel tax at the pump, certainly, just as they should in this country. Its going to change the cost of many things, but at the end of the day there will still be the same amount of money in the economy, the extra tax collected by this means reduces the need to collect in other areas, ie income tax, so for example more people would have more disposable income. Yes very simplistic, but that is the big picture.
Some would argue that that would be then handing out again by paying extra for their fuel, maybe, but they would certainly be looking harder for ways to reduce their useage and pocket the savings.

[Rob]

There are loads of these videos on youtube - search for Cash for clunkers.

There's a mint Volvo that runs for a good 4 minutes with that silica stuff in it.

[geckoGT]

I got the feeling there is a big envoronmental spin on it by the fact that the article quoted fuel consumption figures a number of times. I don't doubt it is also largely to prop up the failing auto companies. I does appear that both elements are behind this.

So Im saying they should pay some more fuel tax at the pump, certainly, just as they should in this country. Its going to change the cost of many things, but at the end of the day there will still be the same amount of money in the economy, the extra tax collected by this means reduces the need to collect in other areas, ie income tax, so for example more people would have more disposable income. Yes very simplistic, but that is the big picture.
Some would argue that that would be then handing out again by paying extra for their fuel, maybe, but they would certainly be looking harder for ways to reduce their useage and pocket the savings.

That view will not be popular around here. Push fuel prices and rego up too much and I might have to sell my new cars and get early 80's cars. Now that would be good for the environment. Name me one time that the government put up the tax on fuel but gave a income tax break as well?

[Bud Bud]

Originally Posted by flappist

Yet you all have no problem in chucking out old phones or computers.....

You do realise that if we also dumped cars at 8 years old the price of new ones would be almost half what it is now.

But of course all the "classic" EAs and VNs would be gone forever and it would be soooo terrible....

Yeh but if they started this 30 or 40 years ago, then there would be no XR-XC or HK-HZ or VE-CM model cars left either (you could put 1200-1600 datos RX1- RX7 mazdas and 2 door escort/cordies and toranas into that category as well) because they too would of been destroyed after they were considered clunkers after they finished their daily duties. Thank god a lot of these survived to become the great collectables of today that some of them now are.

I'm not saying that the EA's VNs' will deserve the same collectable status as their previous cousins in years to come, but just that very little to nothing would have survived past a decade today if this had happened years ago.

Some common sense needs to apply somewhere.

[Tucool]

I couldn't do it....very disturbing

[auxr]

That's a pretty sad read - shades of terminator 2 come to mind - as previously stated a quick reaction to the financial crisis.

[flappist]

Originally Posted by Bud Bud

Yeh but if they started this 30 or 40 years ago, then there would be no XR-XC or HK-HZ or VE-CM model cars left either (you could put 1200-1600 datos RX1- RX7 mazdas and 2 door escort/cordies and toranas into that category as well) because they too would of been destroyed after they were considered clunkers after they finished their daily duties. Thank god a lot of these survived to become the great collectables of today that some of them now are.

I'm not saying that the EA's VNs' will deserve the same collectable status as their previous cousins in years to come, but just that very little to nothing would have survived past a decade today if this had happened years ago.

Some common sense needs to apply somewhere.

And that would be a bad thing???? How many Spitfires, Lada Nivas and Stagecoaches do we need in our museums?

This is a car enthusiast site so talking about removing ald cars from the road is about as popular as discussing Kentucky Fried Chicken at a PETA convention.

The difficult thing is perspective. While almost all AFF members think of cars as works or art and an integral part of their being most of the world think of cars as a thing they use go places like the dishwasher is a thing they use to clean dishes and the microwave is a thing they use to heat food. They are all just appliances.

These people are the MAJORITY (which also explains why Toyota et al. outsell the more spirited marques) and the only reason that the majority of older cars are on the road is that the people driving them cannot afford anything better and will dump them as soon as they can possibly get into something that is safer and cheaper to run.

This is emotionally upsetting to some in the same way that the '96 gun buyback or logging or the traveston dam etc was/is upsetting to others.

There is no right or wrong and getting all wound up will achieve nothing other than make the subject obvious to car haters like scruby as another platform to push to keep himself in the limelight.

It will only happen here if some part of the government thinks they will score political brownie points over it so the best thing to do is just sit back, ignore it and wait until it goes away....

I suspect the yanks are slowly waking up to YES WE CAN = OOPS and that just when they thought they had escaped the sharks they notice crocodiles all around them.......