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Salt Lake City - Armando Rios, of Penguin Auto Salvage, disassembles a car at the salvage yard Salt Lake CIty Friday Aug 7, 2009. Steve Griffin/The Salt Lake Tribune 8/7/09
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Support for the federal government's "Cash for Clunkers" program is mixed among operators of the state's automobile wrecking and salvage yards.

The popular government program -- on Friday it was handed an additional $2 billion -- could create a shortage of secondhand but still serviceable engine parts for older automobiles, say some wrecking-yard operators.

Others, though, laud the program. They say it is removing from the state's roads and highways the older, less fuel-efficient and often unsafe automobiles that threatens public safety.

"We haven't seen the full effect yet of the program because most of those cars taken in by the dealers haven't yet made it through the system," said Eric Prentice, manager of Penguin Auto Wrecking in West Valley City. "Potentially, though, it could result in a shortage of parts that people might want [to use] to keep their older cars running."

The program -- it officially is known as the Cash Allowance Rebate System, or CARS -- offers rebates of $3,500 to $4,500 for interested buyers who are willing to scrap their old vehicles to purchase ones that offer better gas mileage. Once the so-called "clunkers" are in the hands of the new-car dealers, engines must be destroyed by dumping a sodium silicate solution -- euphemistically known as "liquid glass" -- into the crankcase.

"It is a shame that we're not going to be able to recycle the engines from those older vehicles because many of them probably

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still had some useful life left in them," Prentice said.

The Automotive Recyclers Association, which is based in Manassas, Va., agrees. It says that basic economics would suggest that the price of used recycled engines is going to increase.

"The engines in CARS vehicles have to be destroyed [and] that means 750,000 engines will be taken out of commerce," said Michael Wilson, the association's executive vice president.

But Chris Mantas, chief executive of Tear A Part Auto Recycling of Salt Lake City, calls the Cash for Clunkers program "fantastic."

He said the program will benefit the environment by getting thousands of less fuel-efficient vehicles off the roads and benefit the automobile industry because it will lead to an increase in the sale of new automobiles.

"We're getting most of the clunkers from the biggest automobile dealers around -- the Miller Group, Garff and Seiner," Mantas said. "And most of the vehicles we've seen haven't been premium cars.

"In fact, you can tell just by looking that a lot of them shouldn't even have been on the road."

Mantas also argues that for most of the clunkers, it was only a matter of time before they were going to get recycled or scrapped anyway.

Another wrecking-yard operator, though, described the program as a real one-way street that is benefitting only those who are buying new cars -- and the automobile dealers who sell them.

"There already is a shortage of used cars, and that already has driven up the price," said Scott Ortar, manager of Sommer's Auto Wrecking in South Salt Lake. "There are people who count on us (auto wreckers) to provide them the parts they need to keep their cars going, and it doesn't seem to me that this program is going to help."

steve@sltrib.com