Jeez there are times I just hate to be right. Back in May I wrote about the much vaunted 'Cash for Clunkers' program and what the likely outcome might be in my humble opinion. Well, the numbers are in - no, not the governments numbers, the real numbers the government didn't want you to see that had to be obtained through the freedom of information act. It's that whole transparency thing, you know. And it's even worse than I thought. Let's take a look at some of those numbers, shall we?

Here's the fun facts about the recently completed 'cash for clunkers' program, another well  conceived and soundly implemented government-run program. A new reportwas released by the AP yesterday using figures obtained under the freedom of information act. If the AP isn't careful with this kind of factual and statistical reporting they'll soon find themselves under siege by the White House ala Fox News. You can read the full report here: Cash for Clunkers - FAIL.

Of the 677,081 clunkers traded under the program it appears that about 15% got less than 20 mpg. 8,200 times, owners of high mileage Ford F150 pickups simply traded them for new F150's making it the most highly traded vehicle, followed by Dodge Rams and Chevy Silverados.  Many of these vehicles had over 200,000 miles on them so the owners simply swapped. Yeah, they'll be buying again soon. 

Of the estimated $3 Billion spent by the government, $562,000 went for vehicles that got the same or worse mileage than the trade-ins. Most of the trucks traded saw improvements of between 1 and 3 mpg, if at all. A total of almost $1 Billon went for this type of vehicle. 

Trades into higher mileage vehicles like Corollas, Camrys, Civics, Prius' and Focus' rounded out the top ten and accounted for about $2 billion of the total. Those vehicles brought the average fuel economy for vehicles sold under the program to 24.9, up from 15.8 on the trade-ins.

So let's do some math. 

Using round numbers, if your clunker got 15 mpg and you drove 12,000 miles a year you used 800 gallons of gas. The vehicle you purchased got 25 mpg so that same 12,000 miles only used 480 gallons. Good so far?

So the average clunker traded reduced fuel consumption by 320 gallons a year. That's pretty good, eh?

Assuming they got 700,000 of those rust-buckets off the road (actually 677,081), that saved about 224 million gallons of gas. 

It takes about 5 million barrels of oil to produce 224 million gallons of gas.

That's about 1/4 of one days consumption in these United States.

At a price of $75 a barrel (give or take), those 5 million barrels cost $350 million.

So unless I'm wrong here somewhere, the program that this administration lauds as such a great success from an economic and environmental perspective, actually cost us $3 Billion to save $350 Million. That sounds like my wife at a Nordstrom's shoe sale. 

Now line up like good like doo-bees because these same people want to sell you a health care program. I can hardy wait.

Of course that's just my opinion... I could be wrong.