What Happens to Donated Cars?

My car donation story:<p>In 1998 I donated a car to the American Lung Association. It was picked up from my driveway and I thought that was that.<p>Months later, I received a bill in the mail from the Chicago Police Department for impound fees. I do not remember the total but it was in the THOUSANDS. $4000 or so sounds about right in my cloudy recollection.<p>It had been dumped in an alley somewhere in downtown Chicago. The registration had never been transferred and I was still the legal owner.<p>I got it cleared up (fairly easily, thanks CPD - must be a common enough thing), but beware.

I'm a little confused by the conclusion that "It is up to donors to do their research and donate in a way that will maximize the support they provide for charities." I gave a 10 year old Honda Civic with 198,000 miles on it to KQED. A truck showed up and took it away and I got a tax deduction. The car ran okay but didn't pass the California smog test and the chances of me selling it to a third party were small. I got what I wanted, an old car taken away for very little effort. I chose KQED because I'm a big fan of public radio. It was up to KQED to maximise the amount of money they got for it.

An interesting read but, boy, was that a needlessly long article!<p>TLDR; Some car donation schemes are run as for-profit entities but we can't tell how many because the Governement don't keep accurate records. If you donate, do some research before you do.<p>Maybe someone should do a Priceonomics article on the length, and usefulness, of articles vs, cost of time spent reading it.

I like to use Charity Navigator before donating to new charities.<p>They have a quick guide on donating cars:<p><a href="http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&#38;cpid=158" rel="nofollow">http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&#...</a>

Interesting read, I wasn't aware of the tax situation around donated cars.<p>Probably not related, but I'm also interested in the advertising for people that buy "junk cars". I'm saving the SMS junk car spam I get, planning on plotting the advertised price against a timeline for fun.

Assuming there's no fraud, there are four parties who gain from this transaction: (1) the person getting rid of the car without doing any work (2) the person buying the car (3) the person or company whose job it is to do the work (4) the charity.<p>The proportion gained by the charity might be relatively low but everyone gained something, so it's unclear that it's inefficient.

I made the mistake of donating a car I didn't want and was too lazy to sell, never again.<p>I was told all the way "oh, you'll get KBB value for your car!" and the reality was never that, I would only get the auction value. I got less than half of what the car was actually worth...

interesting article. and after finishing it, the radio spots on my local npr affiliate pushing the car-donation angle make me a little bit sad.<p>from the title, I was really hoping they would talk about what happens to the cars _after_ auction...

The barriers involved in selling used cars are so high that people have established a billion dollar industry by simply taking the cars from people for free and promising them money later through tax receipts.<p>Just let that sink in.

Dammit, I was hoping this was an article about how those old minibuses find their way from Northern and Western Europe all the way to West Africa.

Why does the article refer to this as a tax loophole?<p>Isn't this a tax deduction working as intended? It's giving a tax break to people who support charities.

And people complain about government waste...

Recycle cars. End of Story.