Everyone seems to think they know how to run a car company, at least judging by the incessant meddling and lobbying that goes on when it comes to automobiles and how to shore up the faltering industry.

Not me.  I know enough about the industry to know that I probably don’t have the slightest clue as to how to run a car company. If I were suddenly put in charge of a major manufacturer, some very interesting and exciting products would definitely result, but I can’t promise that the company itself would survive.

Of course, that doesn’t stop me from playing the same game everybody else does: “If I was in charge, I would…”

That’s a fun game, isn’t it?  If I was in charge, I’d rebuild Mercury as a brand under which to sell all of the cool Ford products from Australia, Brazil and Europe that American fans are wondering why they can’t get.  If I was in charge, there would be no Jeep Compass.  If I was in charge, the Subaru Baja would still be with us.  If I was in charge, NASCAR would still be populated with “stock” cars in the traditional, 1960s sense.  Contemplating various dumb ideas can lead to occasional brilliance.

With the demise of the CARS incentive program, more commonly known as Cash for Clunkers (or C4C), here’s today’s decision:  If I was in charge at Ford or GM, I’d re-open one or two of those recently closed factories, make the UAW happy by calling a few thousand folks back to work, and have ‘em start dismantling cars.  Taking cars apart is considerably more labor-intensive than putting them together, but if there’s one thing we’ve got too much of now, it’s blue-collar labor.

My perverse train of thought went something like this:  C4C brought howls of protest from the enthusiast community, and with good reason.  A lot of us car guys rely on junkyards to keep our vehicles running.  The thought of summarily flattening a perfectly good (or even a crappy-but-serviceable) vehicle is anathema.  The objective–to get ill-maintained, inefficient vehicles off the roads–is an admirable one, but C4C threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater.  I suspect there would have been a lot less protest if the turned-in vehicles had been made available as parts to help keep better-maintained examples on the road.

Ah, but this would have led to a glut of C4C cars ending up right back on the road, as shady used-car dealers snapped them up, laundered their titles and turned’em around.  Someone always manages to find a way to break the system.  C4C’s solution was just that: a solution poured into the engine that would seize it, destroying the car’s heart irretrievably–even if, in some cases, the engine was the only useful part of the car left.

Flawed or not, the end of the C4C program leaves a lot of older cars out there that could stand to be retired, and owners without any incentive to get rid of them.  When a car’s value drops below $500, it’s often just easier to keep driving the thing, even if it’s dripping enough oil to smother a flock of cormorants.  Junkyards barely pay enough to buy a new stereo, let alone a running vehicle.

Which is where I posit the notion of manufacturers voluntarily dismantling their own products.  Think: dealer-certified used parts.  If I was in charge, I’d authorize my dealers to take trade-ins on older versions of our products and offer C4C-type rebates (the $4500 incentive did sell a lot of new cars, and moving cars out of the showroom is definitely a good thing).  Bring your sorry old 1990 Taurus to us, and we’ll give you ten times its market value…if you buy a new Fusion or Focus.

Those cars (even that ’90 Taurus) would then be hauled back to one of the resurrected plants and torn apart.  Any components that were still useful would then be offered for sale, just like the junkyards do, but through dealer parts departments.  A sad-looking hoopty that’s no longer good for commuting will almost always yield a treasure trove of re-usables: working electrical switches, wiring harnesses, instrument panels, interior trim, glass, wheels, turn signals and brakelights, suspension components, bumpers and body panels (imagine truckloads of rust-free Southern fenders heading north to be swapped for non-baked and faded interior parts from the Rust Belt).  Some parts, like alternators, starters, brake master cylinders, fuel injectors and carburetors, can be refurbished rather than being discarded.

Stripping cars is a labor-intensive process, but as I mentioned before, with two thousand auto workers clamoring for some kind of employment, I think there’d be enough hands to quickly salvage and approve the parts that were worthy of re-use.  The rest of the junk car could then be properly recycled.

There’d be a lot of benefits to this program.  First and foremost, people are getting back to work.  Dealers have access to another line of parts sales, and have a means of keeping customers who would otherwise be chased off by the high price of new parts for older cars.  Don’t want to spend $250 to replace the taillight on your ’87 Corsica?  No problem–we can sell you a Chevy-certified used taillight for fifty bucks, and there’s one less Corsica with a busted taillight making Chevy look bad.

Not only are we putting a shiny new car on the street in place of an ugly older one, but it we’re also helping to make another older car a bit less ugly.  From a PR standpoint, the environmentalists would be ecstatic–not only does this program continue to remove inefficient cars and replace them with more environmentally-friendly models, but it addresses the problem of what to do with the junkers as well.  The parts sales and commensurate increase in new-vehicle sales would serve to offset the cost of the incentives and additional labor.  There’s also a hidden benefit, in that the remaining older products on the road can be better maintained for less cost to the consumer.  Better-maintained vehicles are more environmentally friendly.  They’re also free, rolling advertisements:  a company with a large number of  its products still on the road (and not apparently falling apart) after twenty years can point out the window at the streets any time someone asks for a testament to the quality of its products.

Would it work?  Who knows–I have enough trouble keeping my own checkbook balanced, let alone pretending I know how to manage the ins and outs of a multi-national corporation.  But if I were in charge, I’d certainly call the bean counters and the engineers and the UAW together and see if we couldn’t give it a shot.