By STEVE EIGHINGER

Herald-Whig Staff Writer

Local new-car dealerships are giving a thumbs-up to the "Cash for Clunkers" program, which received an injection of another $2 billion in funds Thursday night.

The Senate voted to refill the popular car incentive program, tripling the $1 billion fund that has led to big crowds at once deserted auto showrooms. President Ba-rack Obama signed the bill today, extending the program into Labor Day and preventing the 2-week-old incentives from running out.

But that doesn't mean there have not been a few hiccups along the way since the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) was signed into law in late June.

The positive signs have been obvious.

"It's been good to see people back in the showroom again," said Rick Veihl, general manager of Poage Auto Plaza, 4300 Broadway.

"I think it's definitely got the factories busy again, because everyone is running out of cars," said Rich Poe, general manager at Shottenkirk Chevrolet, 24th and Locust.

"The response has been tremendous," echoed Butch Gail, general manager at Gem City Ford, 5101 Broadway.

A down side was temporary suspensions of the program by some dealerships because of what they say were snafus at the governmental end of the process. Those problems affected both consumer and dealer.

The "Cash for Clunkers" concept was designed to encourage consumers to trade in older, less fuel-efficient vehicles in exchange for a credit worth up to $4,500 toward a new vehicle. The program was established to run through Nov. 1, or until $1 billion worth of subsidies the government set aside for the credits was spent.

The response from the buying public was much greater than anticipated, by both dealerships and the government. As a result, the government had trouble processing the glut of incoming requests from dealers, forcing customers to wait longer on their new purchases.

All deals have to be entered into a government Web site by the dealerships, which is where one of the bottlenecks unfolded.

"One night we had people here until 4:30 a.m. trying to get through (on the computers)," Poe said. "One of our guys worked 36 straight hours. It was taking as long as 10 hours to get one deal submitted."

Poe said Shottenkirk Chevrolet suspended the program for a week until those kinks were worked out. He said the program was offered again starting Wednesday.

"The government owed us $150,000," he said. "We had to shut it down until the (governmental computer system) was working properly and people at the other end knew what they were doing."

Poe said he was certain shutting down the program for a week cost the dealership some transactions, but he reasoned it was better than possibly having to go back to customers and telling them they owed an additional $3,500 or so for their new car.

Poe said Shottenkirk's policy is not to deliver a new car until the government subsidy has been received.

"Ultimately, the program has done what it was designed to do -- sell more cars and get better gas-mileage cars on the road," he said.

Veihl said Poage's "Cash for Clunkers" program had been on hold until the $2 billion in additional funds was approved. He said Poage halted the program Monday, also in response to delays at the government's end of the process.

Veihl said Poage's policy was to put people in the new cars first and then wait for the money from the government. He is confident the government will hold up its end of the bargain.

"We feel we've done everything right (at our end)," he said.

Gail said Gem City Ford continued to do deals and trying to work through all the red tape associated with such an enterprise.

"I think the positives have outweighed the headaches," he said.

Skeptics of the program have pointed to what they feel was poor planning by the government, especially in the original amount of money targeted for the program. Germany, a much smaller country than the United States, ran a similar program and started with $2 billion and soon tripled that budget.

-- seighinger@whig.com/221-3377