I assumed it was AI generated.

I ran the same query, "what was the long-term impact of Cash for Clunkers," in Copilot and Grok as well. The replies were similar.

Here are the numbers for the cars traded in under the program. The source was an article on jalopnik, which was supportive of the program.

Vehicles Traded-In By Category
Passenger Cars: 109,380
Category 1 Truck: 450,778
Category 2 Truck: 116,909
Category 3 Truck: 8,134

You will have a hard time convincing me that taking nearly 700,000 driveable vehicles permanently off the market had little or no part in the steep increase of used car prices.