Clunking the car repair industry

While the government provides money for people to buy brand new cars that might be only marginally more fuel-efficient than their previous car, one industry that is getting the shaft is, as the WSJ reports, the car repair industry.

Owners of automotive repair shops say the program to help invigorate sales of new cars is succeeding at their expense.

Bill Wiygul, whose family owns four repair shops in Virginia, said he has already had five or six customers decide against repairs. A man who sits on the board of Mr. Wiygul's bank traded in his car rather than repair it. "He'd been a customer at our Reston store since it opened," Mr. Wiygul said.

....Auto dealers who offer the rebates on new cars in exchange for clunkers must agree to "kill" the old models by disabling the engines and shipping the dead vehicle to a junkyard.

The loss of such potential work -- as many as 250,000 vehicles will be destroyed in the program's first round -- prompted Mr. Wiygul to question the federal program's focus on dealers and big business at the expense of the little guy.

"How do we get on the special interests, special treatment bandwagon? How much is it going to cost me and to whom shall I send the check?" he said. "Who picks the winners in this game 'cause obviously the game is fixed."

...."This package will hurt mechanical repairs without question. You are taking older vehicles that are still fine to use and removing them," said Robert Redding Jr., the Automotive Service Association's Washington representative. "If you're taking hundreds of thousands of vehicles that you normally service off the road with no consideration, it hurts people."

But it is more important to have the illusion of doing something for the environment. Who cares about the economic effects on the thousands of repair shops and used car dealers? Or the less affluent people who can't afford to buy the pricey new car, but would perhaps be able to buy a used car and will now see the prices of used cars climbed as the supply is destroyed by government fiat.