The adage my dad used to tell me that "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is" looks like it applies here: In the news today, a suburban Chicago car dealer is selling a PT Cruiser for $1, if you buy a $40,000 luxury SUV.

The Cruisers that Frank Mancari is selling are used 2008 models with about 10,000 miles on them that usually retail for $10,000. The Chrysler Pacifica has a list price of more than $39,000. It's a great way to get people in the door as car sales drop around the country, but a little difficult to swallow when you do the math, as Steve Rhodes of the Beachwood Reporter did.

You're already down some cash by agreeing to the sticker price of the SUV, instead of any negotiated price. As Rhodes points out, maybe you could get the Cruiser for $8,000 and the SUV for $32,000 without the deal. With the deal, the two cars would cost $40,001 together. Not much of a deal so far.

The deal was to have ended Monday after the five Pacificas were sold, but Mancari says he may extend it to other models.

Neither vehicle gets great gas mileage. The Pacifica gets about 15 mpg in the city while the PT Cruiser gets less than 20 miles per gallon in the city. With gas prices dropping, returning to the gas-hog days of the past with an SUV may look like a deal now. But wait until gas prices go up again, because you know they will.

Aaron Crowe is an unemployed journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read about his job search at www.talesofanunemployeddad.blogspot.com

Over the years General Motors dealers have been able to count on GMAC, the lending company owned in part by GM, to provide loans to car buyers at their dealerships.

Before the economy started its nosedive, GMAC-originated loans provided financing for almost half of GM car buyers. But now that the company is concerned about stability, GMAC is cutting back on who it will give loans to. In a letter dated Oct. 13, it announced to all GM dealers that it would no longer make vehicle loans for anyone with a credit score below 700, this coming on the heels of previous cuts which have already cost GM 10,000 buyers a month.

Any move to tighten up credit restrictions by a major corporation will affect parties in different ways; we are going to look at how it will affect the major players below.

• GMAC
• Consumers
• Dealers
• Banks and Credit Unions

Pay as you go isn't just for cell phones anymore, it turns out some auto insurance companies are switching to pay as you go plans in order to offer better rates to customers. Traditionally insurance rates are based on, among many things, the estimated miles that each driver will travel during a year. Many people argue that these estimates are inaccurate and that a pay as you go plan would provide consumers with an incentive to drive less. Legislation is currently underway in California to let insurance companies base rates on actual miles traveled it is estimated that it would be the equivalent of removing 10 million cars from the road!

While California is only on the cusp of letting insurance providers make use of this information to determine what your premium will be at least one other company is already offering pay as you go insurance rates in several states. Progressive offers a My Rate program in four states and requires that users hook up a device to their car which tracks the miles traveled as well as how you drive to recalculate your rate every 6 months.

Both of these plans have some similarities, neither will track where you go with GPS and both of them are under fire by privacy groups. The programs differ in that the My Rate plan from Progressive tracks WHEN and HOW you drive in order to determine your insurance rate. In California, much to the chagrin of insurers, neither of these pieces of information can be tracked.

If you're the kind of driver who has been spending more and more on car washes in the last few years, you may be thinking of cutting back on all that expensive detailing now that money is tight. I talked with a few car wash experts about what you really need and what really pays off in car washing.

The average car gets washed four times a year, says Mark Thorsby, executive director of the International Carwash Association, which, to no one's surprise, recommends a more frequent cleaning of once or twice a month. Car owners have always had a wide range of what they consider the acceptable level of cleanliness and care for their cars.

Many mix-up the at-home and professional cleaning, depending on the season and occasion. They may get the car cleaned after winter or before a wedding. And a few only begrudgingly go only as often as they take themselves to the dentist or doctor-once a year.

"On the other extreme, we have customers in the real estate business who are washing the car every day because they're picking clients up," says Bruce Milen, owner of Jax Kar Wash, a collection of Detroit area car washes that his family started in 1950, with a downtown car wash that was open 24-hours and cost $1. His operation offers a kind of frequent washer program for these obsessive cleaners: for a flat yearly fee they get unlimited washes.

Mark Muller, the owner of Max Motors in Butler, Missouri, blames Barack Obama: "He said all those people in the Midwest, you've got to have compassion for them because they're clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive." Muller went on to admit, however, that "We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns."

The irony-impervious Muller decided to take Obama's words as a challenge, and began offering free handguns with every vehicle purchase. Sales have quadrupled in the three days since the promotion began, and the company has sold more than thirty vehicles. Most customers have taken the free gun, a Kel-Tec .380 pistol, although Muller is also offering a $125 gas card for those patrons who don't want to carry a firearm in the glove compartment.

The irony, of course, is that Muller is doing a fantastic job of proving Obama's point. While we wait for the irony to sink in, however, Muller will continue to sell his road-rage special until May 31, 2008. Get your gas-guzzler and lethal weapon while supplies last!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He's holding out for a catapult and Hummer special.

Back in 2004 a lawyer in Arkansas found out that his odometer wasn't calculating mileage correctly on his Honda minivan. His tests found out that the odometer was off by 5%, so for every 100 miles his minivan would rack up 105 miles. This may seem like small change, but as Bankrate.com points out, even a 5% error can end your new car's warranty up 1000 miles early! The problem only gets worse when you have a car with a 100,000 mile warranty.

The last time you want to be without a warranty is when your vehicle rolls over 100,000, especially not when you really have 5,000 miles left on your warranty. At this point in your car's life it is much more likely to need expensive repairs which would have normally been covered under warranty. You'll appreciate having checked out the calibration of your odometer when your engine or transmission goes out at 100,007 miles.

Finding out if your odometer is quietly eating away at your warranty is really easy, just grab a friend and head to your closest federal highway. All you need to do is measure your odometer against the mile markers, use some of your mathematical skills and viola, you know how far off your odometer is. Bankrate has several steps to take in the event your odometer is skimming cash from your wallet. Thankfully most odometers are computer controlled, and can be fixed at your local dealer.

When we bought our most recent car we made sure that the car didn't have any odometer fraud, but we didn't even think to check that it was recording correctly. It looks like we have a project for our next road trip, especially since we purchased a power-train warranty with the vehicle.

Anytime you go car shopping you get slapped in the face with dealer incentives swathed in bright colors and exclamation points. While many people filter out similarly structured sales pitches online, for some reason car dealers are given a pass on the use of ALL CAPS and big promises. Take for example the $500 in free gas which many dealerships are quick to offer. This "generous" offer is yet another way to convince the buyer that they are putting one over on the dealer and getting a better deal. One of the providers of the gas rebate service is FreebieGas.com, which still proclaims an all time high gas price of $2.50 per gallon. Like all dealer incentives there is a catch, and in all my years of dealing with rebates I don't think I have heard one with this many hoops to jump through.

What the dealer doesn't tell you about the gas rebate you just used to rationalize purchasing a more expensive car, is that it will cost you money just to sign up for the rebate program. From here the process only gets shadier and trickier, you must buy $100 in gas each month to receive a $25 gas card AND you have to make all these purchases at the same gas station. After you spend your monthly quota for gas you better head to the post office and overnight your receipts as they need to be received before the first day of the next month in order to count for redemption. Finally 2 grand and 20 months later -- if you are lucky you'll have recouped the $500 in gas incentives. In case this still sounds like a good deal or you feel like you can beat the system with your moleskin notebook and in-car stapler, the $500 in gas you receive still needs to be reported as income on your state and federal taxes. I like to consider myself a frugal shopper but a gas rebate process like this is too involved even for my stingy ways.

Heading out to purchase a used car soon? Be sure to read, Tom Barlow's latest post to learn how to make a car dealer your agent as you search for your dream car.

So I'm furious about the continually creep upward of gas prices, and it hits me. There are web sites out there that will tell you how to find cheap gas.

I've known about this for a couple years, but do I think to take a look at any of them before I go driving? No. So telling everyone about this is as much for me as it is for you. Maybe if I take the time to go through the list of some of the sites that are out there, it'll be in my mind, and I'll start actually using them.

The best that I've seen is GasBuddy.com, though for all I know, it's only the fourth best, or the 14th. Still, it seems really comprehensive, and when I checked to see what gas stations I could find in Cincinnati with the cheapest fuel, there were quite a few options, and they had all been updated within hours of my looking. When I went to Automotive.com's gas price web site, the information for my town was pretty comprehensive--but two days' old. I also got a kick out of the fact that GasBuddy shows where the highest gas prices are, in case I want to stay away from stopping for gas in a certain area, or if I develop a sudden urge to give the oil companies more of my money. Stranger things have happened to me. Once several years ago, when gas prices first shot up and things felt futile, I almost mailed my credit cards and wallet to Shell Oil, figuring that I might as well cut out the middleman.

One of the keys to achieving financial success is avoiding doing exceptionally imbecilic things with your money. Unfortunately, the frequency of people doing one of the dumbest things you can possibly do is on the rise.

With bleak forecasts for the car industry, USA Today reports that Toyota Motor Credit acknowledged at a meeting last week that, since August, it has been making seven-year loans to cut monthly payments for buyers and boost sales.

There are a few reasons that you're stupid if you enter into a deal like this. First of all, with new cars losing about half their value in the first few years, there's a good chance that you will very quickly owe more than the car is worth. Second, a longer loan means you'll pay more in interest. Third, if you need to stretch out payments over 7 years to avoid a car, you are buying way more car than you can afford.

Why do people do loans like this? A longer loan allows for smaller monthly payments, allowing people to buy cars they wouldn't be able to afford with shorter loans and bigger payments.

Here's the thing to remember: if you need a car loan to buy a car, that means you can't afford the car. If you can get a really low interest rate, it might make sense to take out a loan. But financially intelligent people generally avoid using leverage to acquire depreciating assets. And only morons take out 7-year car loans.

I am a simplification newbie.

Though I've always been stubborn and loved to do things authentically -- I whisk my butter and cream by hand, I use a film camera, I once pieced a quilt with only needle and thread, by God -- I did not come easy to simplification. I used to scoff at those who would give up plastic, and who would home school, and raise all their vegetables in their very own garden. I secretly made fun of composters.

And then, one day, I decided to give up our family car. Though my husband eventually came to embrace the choice as his own, I was rather forceful about it. We'd gotten a flat tire, and the car was due for all kinds of expensive tune-ups and fix-its. We were a little late with our insurance renewal.

It wasn't really as hard as it seems.
And let me know how it goes.