Old Truck for New Truck the Most Common Cash-for-Clunker Trade

Of the thousands of Americans who took advantage of the government's $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program, most reportedly replaced old pickup trucks with new ones.

A high percentage of the new trucks purchased in the program, designed to put more fuel-efficient cars on the road, get "only marginally better gas mileage" than the ones they replaced, according to an Associated Press analysis. The report looked at sales of $15.2 billion worth of vehicles at nearly 19,000 car dealerships.

More than 8,200 buyers traded in an old Ford F150 pickup for a newer version of the same model, making it the most common swap of the program. A new F150 gets an average of one to three more miles per gallon than many clunkers, the AP said.

Many high-mileage cars were also purchased as part of the four-week program. The Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Toyota Camry and Ford Focus were each among the Top 10 most popular new vehicles bought under Cash for Clunkers.

In apparent violation of the program's requirements, the government reported spending a total of $562,500 in rebates for many new cars and trucks that got the same or worse mileage as the trade-ins. The government said those sales are being investigated and may be based on outdated fuel economy figures.

Analysts are still debating what the legacy of the Cash for Clunkers program will be.

"If we're looking for the environmental story here, we're going to be disappointed," Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive at the analyst firm Edmunds.com, told the AP. "It might have started out from the perspective of improving the environment, but it got detoured as a way to stimulate the economy."