Aug. 24--It was guilt, as much anything else, that led Annette Tousignant to Walser Toyota in Bloomington on Saturday.

She's been driving to work, 22 miles a day, in a minivan that gets about 15 miles per gallon. "You feel guilty when you're driving a vehicle too large for one person," she admitted.

But it didn't hurt that she qualified for $4,500 under the federal "cash for clunkers" program, which expires today. So on Saturday, she and her husband, Roger, sealed the deal, trading in their nine-year-old gas guzzler for a new silver Corolla that averages 29 mpg.

"I hope I'm going to notice that when I fill up at the pump," she said.

Car dealers throughout the metro area are in high gear as the clunkers program comes down to today's 7 p.m. finish line.

More than 12,000 Minnesotans have taken advantage of the program, which tacks on as much as $4,500 to the trade-in value of qualifying vehicles.

In Minnesota, the average clunker trade-in subsidy has been about $4,200 per vehicle, said the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association in St. Paul.

While the program has been credited for goosing moribund auto sales, it's not been hassle-free. And dealers worry that an expected frenzy of last-minute buying today could frustrate consumers or block dealers from getting paid.

"We expect a nationwide rush at the end of Monday that will clog the government computers again," said Scott Lambert, executive vice president of the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association. "If that means dealers can't get their deals submitted on Monday night, we'll go back to our congressional delegation and ask for some leeway on the federal deadline."

Most of Minnesota's dealers are still waiting to be reimbursed, Lambert said. Of the 12,000-plus sales so far, subsidies for 82 percent of them -- worth about $50 million -- still are pending, Lambert said.

"Since the program began on July 24, we've done 626 clunker deals," said Cindy Wagener, director of operations at Morrie's Automotive Group in Minnetonka. "We've been paid for 52 of them, we have 27 ready for payment, and the rest are pending."

Churning out sales

But there's no doubt that the program has breathed new life into showrooms.

"We've sold about 30 cars today, and about 19 of them are cash for clunkers," said Charlie Swenson, general manager of Walser Toyota, on Saturday afternoon, adding he hadn't seen such a frenzy in years. Typically, he said, buyers like to wait and think it over, but with Monday's deadline looming, "there isn't any time for that. It's either now or never."

Some people were even trading in minivans for two-seat Smart Cars, which boast 41 mpg. "We've seen a lot of pickups," said manager Jennifer Beckman of Smart Center in Bloomington. "The green side of that is getting cars off the road that have high emissions and lower fuel economy."

As the program ends, last-minute car buyers might have a different experience than in the first weeks of the program.

Instead driving their new cars home once they sign the papers, they may have to wait at auto dealerships until officials are able to feed the clunker deals into the federal website, and thus ensure that they'll be reimbursed.

"On Monday, we must be able to submit the deal to the federal website before the customer can drive the car away," said Doug Sprinthall, the director of new vehicle operations at the Bloomington-based Walser Automotive Group, which has nine metro-area dealerships. "In the last few weeks, that's been taking 10 to 15 minutes. But when the first $1 billion for the program ran out, computer congestion meant it took two hours."

Wagener said Morrie's won't decide until the last minute whether to hold cars at the dealership pending successful submission to government computers.

Other dealers say they'll stop making clunker deals if they fear they won't be able to make the required computer submissions by 7 p.m.

"If there are government computer troubles today [Monday], we'll discontinue doing clunker deals at that point," said Tom Leonard, co-owner of Fury Motors in South St. Paul.

Because of the tight deadline for submitting clunker deals to the government, it's especially important that customers bring the right documents to the dealership, Leonard said.

The necessary documents

Car buyers need: current license tabs on the vehicle they're trading in; a copy of their car registration; a title in their own name that shows they've had the car for at least one year, and evidence of continuous insurance for a year (either four quarterly proof-of-insurance insurance cards or a signed letter from the insurance company).

Despite the concerns about getting paid, dealers are anticipating heavy customer traffic through the trade-in deadline.

As a result of all those clunker deals, auto inventories are low, Lambert said. But, because of a change in the clunkers program's rules, customers can qualify for the trade-in subsidy even if they order a car that isn't delivered for a month or more.

By Saturday morning, Morrie's Hyundai in St. Louis Park had more than 100 gas guzzlers in its "clunker row." Most were old minivans and SUVs -- and the occasional rusty Mercedes -- waiting to be towed to the junkyard. As part of the cash for clunkers program, the trade-ins can't be resold, and some seemed abandoned in a hurry -- with old coffee cups and blankets still inside. "Well, it's going to the junkyard," shrugged Jesse Bishop, Morrie's general manager.

Sprinthall, of Walser, suggested that cash for clunkers may have an unintended benefit. "Some of these things, you wonder how people drove them around," he said. By getting them off the street, "we really will beautify America."

alex@startribune.com --612-673-4553 mlerner@startribune.com --612-673-7384

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