the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS, commonly known as ‘Cash-For-Clunkers’), one of several stimulus programs whose purpose was to shift expenditures by households, businesses, and governments from future periods when the economy is likely to be stronger, to the present when the economy has an abundance of unemployed resources that can be put to work at low net economic cost.
It was totally a handout, pretty much explicitly:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/04/05/did-cash-clunkers-work-intended