Car dealers are being reminded by the Pasch Consulting Group to get their Cash for Clunkers sales posted in the NHTSA system for reimbursement as quickly as possible.  The reason is simple; by keeping these transactions offline, the NHTSA record keepers can not properly account for the depletion of CARS funding.

In a survey conducted by the Pasch Consulting Group  today, only 35%of the cars sold under the CARS program were submitted into the NHTSA online reimbursement system as of July 28, 2009.  Of those submitted, only a percentage have been approved by the NHTSA since all sales have to be manually reviewed.

That means that 65% of all CARS sales are still offline today.

The survey data confirms that thousands of cars sold under the program are still offline.  When the dealers get around to submitting these car sales this week, the funding dollars can evaporate quickly.   Some dealers reported selling 20, 30 and 40 cars and had submitted zero to the NHTSA system.  How many dealers are in the same place?

This begs the question of how long will the $1 billion in funding last.   We predict that it will be gone in early August because of the delay in processing the data.  This will be an expensive game of musical chairs for car dealers that have un-submitted sales when money runs out.  

CARS Submission Delays

The CARS submission backlog according to dealers polled in the survey is being caused by a number of factors which include:

• New forms released on Friday require consumers to come back to dealership to sign paperwork.
• Dealers are getting booted off the web based submission system.
• The submission process is lengthy and staffing is an issue.
• The sales will be rejected for incomplete documentation so compliance review is needed.
• Some car dealers still do not have a proper login to submit their sales.
• Some deals are waiting for NHTSA approval since cars are missing from Fuel Economy website.

NHTSA Initial Sales Data

The NHTSA released numbers today saying that 4,026 sales have been processed totaling 17 million dollars but has to be only a fraction of what has been submitted and an even smaller fraction of the outstanding cars that are still not submitted. 

We believe the public is underestimating the incoming flood of car deals over the next week.  We encourage consumers to make their buying decisions quickly.  (See post about Funding Evaporating)

We also believe that car dealers should be very concerned about has fast they can submit their sales for reimbursement.  Those who wait may find themselves holding a deal that can not get reimbursed.

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