This is an IHeart podcast.

Go behind the wheel and under the hood on everything automotive with high-speed stuff from How StuffWorks.com.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Scott Benjamin. I'm the auto editor here at How StuffWorks.com, and today I'm joined by a special guest, Jennifer Geiger.

Hi, Jennifer.

Hi, how are you?

All right, thank you. And Jennifer is the online managing editor at consumer guide.com, and she's going to be talking with us today a little bit about the Cash for Clunkers program.

Yes, Cash for Clunkers is kind of a very complicated way to get older gas-guzzling cars off of the highway.

Oh, that's good.

The $1 billion government subsidy plan, and it gives consumers between $3,500 and $4,500 to trade in their really high gas-guzzling vehicle for a more fuel-efficient one.

That seems to make sense anyways.

So the idea is that you trade in your old vehicle for a voucher, right?

Right, yeah.

It's a 1985 or newer car.

Those qualify, and your car has to get 18 miles per gallon or less in order to qualify.

Your new car has to get 22 miles per gallon or more to qualify.

And depending on the miles per gallon difference in between, you can get a $3,500

voucher or a $4,500 voucher.

Okay. Well, that doesn't sound too strict, but 18 miles per gallon, I don't know,

that sounds a little bit like, it's kind of high mileage, really.

Well, yeah, not a lot of cars are going to qualify. We actually did a little study on

Consumer Guide.com's website doing some research for this article, and we found out that a lot

of popular older cars just won't qualify because they got better mileage. Like a 1988

...