This is why I didn't mess around with my Cash for Clunker deal.
Last February, my 1999 Town and Country minivan was totaled by a serious fender bender / mild accident. I got about $5k from the insurance after opting to keep the drivable yet ugly car for $250. I then drove it around for a few months until the bearings started doing funny things, and I could tell that it was getting no longer safe to drive.
Long story short, a friend told me about the CARS act, so the second it was signed into law I decided I was going to go for it. Figuring that the program might run out quickly, or it would be difficult to find the car that I wanted during the rush, I found a local dealership that was pre-selling cars (ie, taking deposits, getting the car on the lot, etc..) in early July, and put a $500 refundable deposit down on a new Toyota RAV4.
Only the evening of July 26th, I drove my potentially unsafe (yet still insured, for the record) minivan over to the dealership in the middle of the night. Monday morning I walked in and got my new RAV4 (which was already on the lot, with all the paperwork done) with my $4500 credit. I'm very happy, since there is no way I would have been able to afford a new car without the program. It's also pretty damned amusing that I got nearly $10,000 (insurance+CARS act credit) out of a minivan that probably wasn't worth more than $4k before the accident.