You’re way off.

There were fuel economy requirements for c4c, your trade in had to be low mpg and your new purchase or lease had to be higher mpg. So it was never econoboxes. In fact they changed the rules in the middle of it and blacklisted a bunch of engine and model combos so you couldn’t get the rebate if your trade in was good enough on gas.

If a person was coming in to get the c4c money then the dealer had to record the vins to prevent fraud. They made a system in some of the vin check websites that made it so you could look up and make sure you weren’t being sold a salvage car like after Katrina. There was still a really small amount of insane bullshit but it was one of the first times back then that you could get a free title check across state lines instantly and online.

When a dealer gave someone the c4c money they had to record what title it was for and destroy the engine and body. So there was only the car salesman who’s employer wouldn’t be footing the bill for the payout standing between some prospective buyer correctly recognizing it was their one chance to get more for their trade in than any dealership would ever give them being way more willing to sign an onerous lease and signing off on putting reliable vehicles like the box Cherokee and blazer (and f150 and 1500 and and and) on the conveyor belt to being destroyed.

And c4c cars never got scrapped. They were destroyed and then junked. After the most expensive part was destroyed as a requirement of the program the yard that did the job had 180 days to destroy the body. American scrapyards aren’t like European or Asian ones where the car is disassembled into its component parts that each get tagged and put on a shelf in a big warehouse, they drag the car out into a field and let it sit there. A car with no usable engine isn’t even worth handling because it’s taking up space that one with an engine could occupy. It’s not even worth putting in a spot because you have half a year to get some value out of the accessories that weren’t damaged in the engine destruction process (no water pump, no manifolds, no radiators or oil coolers, when the engine blows its seals externally it might even take out the alternator!) and the interior before you gotta move it on. Better to never mess with it in the first place.

Even if none of that were true and it wasn’t actively destroying the parts, engine and chassis availability for two decades of vehicles people could have been driving for dubious environmental and economic gain, c4c specifically incentivized the poorest drivers to take on debt in order to juice the economy. It was fucking evil.