Nearly 700,000 Clunkers Traded-In in US CARS

With the US Car Allowance Rebate System now officially closed, we're all curious to find out which were the most attractive models in the scheme and, more importantly, which are the companies that benefitted the most following the scrapping programme. According to official stats provide by NHTSA, Toyota Corolla leads the top of the best-selling US CARS models, followed by Honda Civic, Toyota Camry, Ford Focus and Hyundai Elantra.

Toyota was the best selling brand, with 19 percent of the total sales going to the Japanese manufacturer. General Motors comes second with 17.6 percent, followed by Ford (14.4 percent), Honda (13 percent), Nissan (8.7 percent) and Hyundai (7.2 percent).

Passenger cars were obviously the most attractive, with buyers purchasing 404,046 cars through the scheme. On the other hand, the most traded-ins were trucks, with 450,778 units. Chrysler was only the seventh with 6.6 percent while Kia came in eight with 4.3 percent.

"Cars purchased under the program are, on average, 19% above the average fuel economy of all new cars currently available, and 59% above the average fuel economy of cars that were traded in. This means the program raised the average fuel economy of the fleet, while getting the dirtiest and most polluting vehicles off the road," it is mentioned on the official NHTSA website.

"84% of trade-ins under the program are trucks, and 59% of new vehicles purchased are cars. The program worked far better than anyone anticipated at moving consumers out of old, dirty trucks and SUVs and into new more fuel-efficient cars."