Official Website of Ellis Henican | Cashless Clunkers Where’s My Money?

“Clunkers for Cash,” Ellis Henican Sunday Column, Newsday, August 9, 2999, page 2

You can’t say Cash for Clunkers didn’t motivate.

Americans have already agreed to trade a huge number of old cars for new ones. And the feds have burned through a billion dollars the way a fully loaded ’98 Ford Expedition burns though gas.

Pat Tavella knows how fast that is. Her family has one.

“It’s definitely a clunker,” she said. “It gets, maybe, 14 miles a gallon. It runs, but it doesn’t run well.”

Happy to do her part for the environment, even happier to save $4,500 on a new car, she figured the Tavellas of West Islip were perfect candidates.

So did the first local Jeep Dodge dealer she visited.

And the second one. And the Volkswagen dealer. And the next VW dealer. And the one after that. But at all five Long Island car dealers, the story was pretty much the same.

“We picked out the car,” Tavella said. “We negotiated the price. Our credit was good. The Expedition was definitely a clunker.”

And for some reason or other, the clunker deals kept falling though.

There was one complication on the Tavellas’ part. “The title was in my daughter’s name, and the car was registered in my husband’s,” she said. But that seemed surmountable. What wasn’t was far too many customers looking for clunker cash in far too complicated an approval process.

Which is how Pat Tavella ended up agreeing to make her clunker deal near her brother’s house in Westborough, Mass.

“We’re getting a Volkswagen Tiguan with all-wheel drive, 24 miles to the gallon, for $22,000. With the clunker money and various other rebates, it’s down from 31.”

One clunker down.

ON SECOND THOUGHT
1. Billy Mays: That white powder wasn’t OxyContin
2. Jenny Sanford: Call me at the beach house.
3. Wall Street bear: Won’t anyone come out to play?
4. CDC: That swine’s no holiday.
5. Twitter: Hello? Hello? Hello?

GO LO’: Loved “Living Lohan” and still hungry for more? Absolutely kill at BlackBerry BrickBreaker? Baby Lo-sibs Ali and Cody Lohan are DJ’ing a BBBB contest at noon, Aug. 22, at the Z-Com-Verizon Wireless store in the Parkway Plaza Shopping Center, Carle Place. Smart phone . . . smart people?

ELLIS BOOK CLUB: Hate making presentations? Lots of people do. Here in the age of PowerPoint wizardry and short-attention spans, just standing up and sharing is almost never enough. The best cure for podium angst I’ve come across: “TJ Walker’s Secret to Foolproof Presentations.” Written by a veteran media trainer, this short book is “The Elements of Style” for the get-up-and-show-it crowd. They’ll be riveted and won’t let you leave.

ASKED AND UNANSWERED: Happy to hear the recession may be ending. But why do I have to be a lagging indicator? . . . What’s the right description for Long Island‘s hard-to-read housing market? Still comatose? Slowly awakening? Or deeply, deeply conflicted? . . . So now we know why Billy Mays was always so frantic? . . . Not Copenhagen! How many Americans knew that “Scandinavian-design” tableware giant Dansk was founded in Ted and Martha Nierenberg’s Great Neck garage? Ted just died at 86, leaving millions of sleek serving utensils behind . . . What’s his defense? Cluelessness? Ryan Codey, 17, was arrested after his alleged assault on a 16-year-old “former friend” was videotaped at the Massapequa Preserve and posted on the Internet . . . Could Suffolk support its own talk-radio station? Long Island University is selling WLIU, 25,000 watts at 88.3 FM. . . . What’s that scent Sarah Jessica Parker is wearing? It’s not “Lovely.” Could it be “Lawsuit?” SJP’s fragrance partner Coty is accusing Farmingdale’s Universal Perfumes of hawking knock-offs . . . Uniforms for engineers? Is that Kathleen Rice‘s big idea for LIRR safety? . . .STOPPED: Sheriffs Telling Our Parents and Promoting Educated Drivers. From the first-person plural in the title, are we to assume Suffolk teens WANT their parents called after every traffic stop? . . . Why is New York State covering OSI Pharmaceuticals‘ broken-lease costs in Farmingdale? So the LI drug company can move to new headquarters at Westchester‘s Ardsley Park? Gee, thanks, Albany!