Is there data on the types of cars bought and turned in during the "cash for clunkers" program?

Question

I'm interested in determining what sort of cars were traded in and what sort of cars were purchased through the cash for clunkers program.

Does anyone know where to find that data?

I would hope it would include fields like make, model, year, price, state, city of trade or purchase.

Answer 1

The stats seem to have been quoted on a number of sites. The official name of the program was the "CARS program". You can find additional statistics on the transactions here:

http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Regulations/CARS+Program+Transaction+Data+and+Reports

The "Final Paid Transaction Database" appears to be what you're looking for. It's available as a Microsoft Access database or a CSV file (described as 'text' on the site.) Here is the list of columns in the CSV file (as generated with csvcut -n)

  1: vendor_id
  2: dealer_name
  3: address_line1
  4: address_line2
  5: address_line3
  6: address_line4
  7: city
  8: state
  9: ZIP
 10: area_code
 11: phone
 12: invoice_id
 13: invoice_num
 14: invoice_date
 15: sale_date
 16: disposal_status
 17: disposal_facility_nmvtis_id
 18: disposal_facility_contact_info
 19: sales_type
 20: invoice_amount
 21: trade_in_VIN
 22: trade_in_vehicle_category
 23: trade_in_make
 24: trade_in_model
 25: trade_in_year
 26: trade_in_vehicle_drive_train
 27: trade_in_mileage
 28: trade_in_title_state
 29: trade_in_registration_state
 30: trade_in_registration_start
 31: trade_in_registration_end
 32: trade_in_insurance_start
 33: trade_in_NMVTIS_flag
 34: trade_in_odometer_reading
 35: new_vehicle_VIN_trunc
 36: new_vehicle_category
 37: new_vehicle_make
 38: new_vehicle_model
 39: new_vehicle_year
 40: new_vehicle_drive_train
 41: new_vehicle_car_mileage
 42: new_vehicle_MSRP

The New York Times posted some summary statistics:

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/the-final-numbers-on-clunkers/?scp=3&sq=cash%20for%20clunkers&st=cse

Answer 2

Many Eyes lists one data set:

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/analytics/manyeyes/datasets/cash-for-clunkers-data/versions/1

The provenance can be somewhat suspect when using Many Eyes data, so please follow up with the donator and make sure that the data is valid.

For states, there are a few reports showing economic impact on the states where sales were made. One such report is here:

http://Fwww.remi.com/download/presentations/2010_miscellaneous_topics/Cash_for_Clunkers_Report.pdf

This report also lists links to several other data sets where they pulled their data.