The result? Of the new vehicles sold under the program, the top three were all Japanese — the Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic and Toyota Camry — and only two of the top 10 were built by one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers.

Fast forward five months, and the same lawmaker who designed the program is now blasting the Japanese for excluding American models from Japan’s own clunkers initiative. The Washington Post reports today that Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio), who sponsored America’s clunkers program, filed a resolution Tuesday “calling for the U.S. trade officials to initiate a trade case against Japan if its program continues to exclude U.S. brands.”

“It’s outrageous,” Sutton said Wednesday. “They specifically designed it to exclude the participation of U.S. auto imports.”

This is no black and white issue. The foreign transplants do plenty of manufacturing in the U.S., creating thousands of jobs, particularly in the Southern states. Still, if the goal was to boost sales in Detroit, Sutton might have fought harder to limit the program to vehicles made in the U.S., as her initial proposal would have done.

“Pursuant to the legislation, the DOT had only 30 days after the date the legislation was enacted into law to engage contractors and stand up the Program before the first rebates were issued,” Grassley wrote Tuesday in a letter to Ray LaHood, secretary of the Department of Transportation.

It is my understanding that the original legislation provided $50 million to cover the costs of these contracts, but no specific funding provision for the contractors was included with the additional $2 billion that was provided for the Program. To date the Administration has not provided an accurate accounting of the administrative costs related to the Cash for Clunkers program and I believe that the American taxpayer deserves more information, not less, and that information needs to come sooner rather than later.

The numbers aren’t insignificant. In August, Autoblog reported that the administrative costs to process the 690,000 transactions hit $100 million — or about $145 per vehicle. Among the contractors/agencies who received some of that pie, Grassley says, are Citibank, Vangent and the IRS. The response should be interesting.

Due to a variety of factors, including that the restructurings of General Motors and Chrysler were accomplished with less disruption to GMAC than banking supervisors initially projected, Treasury will commit $3.8 billion of new capital to GMAC rather than the $5.6 billion originally announced, resulting in a $1.8 billion reduction in Treasury’s previously forecasted TARP expenditures.

Prior to today’s actions, Treasury had invested $12.5 billion in preferred stock of GMAC. Treasury owns $13.1 billion in preferred stock in GMAC, through purchases and the exercise of warrants, and 35 percent of the common equity in GMAC.

The new infusion raises the government’s stake in GMAC to 56 percent. All of the cash, because it originates from the unfunded Troubled Asset Relief Program, will be borrowed, mostly from abroad.

UPDATE: Although GMAC is best known for its auto loans, the new cash will go toward the company’s mortgage-financing arm, The Associated Press reports:

All of the money injected by the Treasury will essentially go to shoring up GMAC’s ResCap unit, the arm best known for ditech.com and other housing-boom related mortgage offers that crashed as housing prices withered over the past couple of years. GMAC said the move, along with a $3.3 billion write-down in mortgages at ResCap and Ally Bank, should allow it to explore a sale or other action for ResCap.

That’s precisely what happened.

Roughly 13 weeks after Congress infused $2 billion more into the Clunkers program — and about 10 weeks after the program ended — the Department of Transportation finally unveiled the final figures surrounding the program, posting the details of all 677,000 transactions on its Website. The Associated Press undertook the unenviable task of crunching the data, to discover that the single most popular swap was that of an old Ford F-150 pickup for a new Ford F-150 pickup.

Owners of that pickup were 17 times more likely to buy a new F-150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The new pickups’ EPA combined city/highway mileage ratings ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg, depending on the powertrain and other factors, up 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the old ones.

That’s not to say there wasn’t some environmental benefit to the program. Indeed, the average trade-in vehicle got 15.8 miles per gallon, while drive-away vehicles averaged 24.9 mpg. Still, how much better could those numbers have been if Congress had summoned the guts to pass a slightly different Clunkers bill — one that bumped up the mileage requirements to prevent drivers from trading clunkers for clunkers? As Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the sponsors of the alternative bill, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in June, the original program was “expertly designed to provide Detroit one last windfall in selling off gas guzzlers currently sitting on dealer lots because they’re not a smart buy.”

Of course, in the end, both Feinstein and Collins voted for the $2 billion extension of that very windfall.

The official said the DOT has reviewed “just under 170,000″ of the 457,000 dealer submissions, but incomplete forms and other technical complications have slowed outgoing payments.

A large number of those [applications] are incomplete or have inaccurate information, and so the process when that happens is that the application is turned back to the dealer, and the Department of Transportation gives the dealer an opportunity to correct for those incomplete or inaccurate components, after which point they resubmit.

The delay is problematic to dealers, who effectively have to front the cash rebate (between $3,500 and $4,500) when they accept a clunker and let the customer drive off in a new vehicle. And it’s the dealer who’s on the line for that money if the trade for some reason doesn’t qualify for the federal rebate.

The Washington Post reported this morning that some dealers, growing impatient with the agency, have stopped participating in the program altogether.

“The overriding objective was to be conservative and to provide an adequate window for a soft landing [for consumers and dealers],” the official said.

Whether congressional defenders of the auto industry are ready to concede the end of this program — a boon to the automakers and dealers alike — has yet to be seen.

For example, the Department should consider implementing a policy providing that all properly submitted vouchers will be reimbursed within five business days, and continue adding staff and devoting resources as needed to meet this timeline. By adopting such a guideline, dealers will be more willing to place their capital at risk to carry the cost of CARS vouchers until reimbursement, and more dealers will continue participating in the program, thereby maximizing the program’s objectives.

On Wednesday, DOT Secretary Ray LaHood told reporters that the agency is adding employees to process the voucher submissions, adding that, “There will be no car dealers that won’t be reimbursed.” Earlier in the week, the department revealed that dealers have already submitted more than 435,000 vouchers, worth roughly $1.8 billion, under the $3 billion program (though it’s still refusing to release the details of those sales.)

Although there will surely be political pressure to extend the program further next month, particularly from Michigan’s powerful delegation, reports this week indicate that the administration is already planning its exit strategy.

The Department of Transportation released figures Wednesday indicating that, as of yesterday morning, more than 316,000 new vehicles have been sold under the program, at a cost of $1.33 billion. The DOT has also released occasional top-10 lists of the best-selling models. But requests for more detailed information have been met with silence.

DOT spokeswoman Patricia Swift-Oladeinde said Wednesday that the agency simply hasn’t crunched those numbers.

Yet Lena Pons, policy analyst at Public Citizen, doubts that claim. “They have the information,” Pons said. “They have to have it to reimburse the dealers.”

Indeed, if the DOT has the data to compile top-10 lists, it surely knows also which models fill slots 11 through the rest. But, despite several Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the data (including one from Public Citizen), the administration is refusing to give up the details.

Those details could have significant consequences. When the Senate last week passed a $2 billion extension of the program, several powerful lawmakers threatened to fight the additional funding unless the guidelines were altered in favor of stricter mileage standards. But Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — the three who led the push for better fuel efficiency rules — were convinced those changes were unnecessary after the DOT released summary data claiming that drivers were buying up small, highly efficient cars.

“What we’ve learned is that American consumers are choosing vehicles with much higher fuel efficiency than is required,” Feinstein said in a statement announcing her change of heart.

Yet there are indications that the program isn’t promoting the vehicle sales the DOT has claimed. Indeed, although the agency says the 10 best-selling vehicles under cash for clunkers are all small cars, a separate study by Edmunds.com, an auto analysis group, found that both the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado trucks have crept onto that list. The New York Times this week quoted an anonymous White House aide conceding that the program is one “in which you trade old clunkers for new clunkers.” Dealerships are reporting sales of Cadillac SRXs and Hummer H3Ts. And even Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said that, given the chance, he’d use the program to scoop up a Ford Explorer SUV, the 4WD version of which gets just 15 miles per gallon.

Considering the popularity of the program — both with consumers and the auto industry — there’s certain to be pressure on Congress to extend the program yet again if the extra $2 billion runs out quickly. Some lawmakers have hinged their support for additional funds on first getting a better understanding of what the program is doing. They can’t know the answer, however, if the administration continues to withhold the trade-in figures.

The vote — 60 to 37 — came less than a week after the House approved the same proposal. Senate passage of an identical bill means that drivers can continue receiving between $3,500 and $4,500 to trash their gas guzzlers in favor of vehicles that get better mileage.

Seven amendments to the House proposal were offered on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, with Democratic leaders, behind Michigan’s influential delegation, successfully urging lawmakers to oppose each proposal, one by one. If any of the amendments had passed, then the entire bill would have required re-approval by House lawmakers, who left Washington last week for August recess. The delay would have left car dealers uncertain when (or if) the funding would arrive, likely stalling the cash for clunkers program altogether.

The impetus for Senate lawmakers to pass the House bill was clear: Though the environmental benefits of the program are slight, the initiative has been a boon to auto dealers and consumers alike. Few lawmakers wanted to return home for the August break to face an angry constituency.

Looking ahead, there are still questions about what would happen if the $2 billion runs out while Congress is on recess. And there remain concerns about how and when that money — which was siphoned from a loan program encouraging the development of green technologies — might be replaced.

But for now, most lawmakers are just breathing sighs of relief that the bill is passed, and vacation has arrived.

President Obama has promised to sign the bill into law as soon as it hits his desk.

The amendments are:

1) Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa): To limit the provision of vouchers to individuals with adjusted gross incomes of less than $50,000 or joint filers with adjusted gross incomes of less than $75,000.

2) Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.): In the nature of a substitute.

3) Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.): To protect generations of tomorrow from paying for new cars today.

4) Sen. David Vitter (R-La.): To provide for a date certain for termination of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

5) Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.): To provide assistance to charities and families in need.

6) Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.): To prohibit the Federal Government from holding ownership interests, and for other purposes

7) Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.): To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide an income tax credit for certain home purchases, and to transfer to the Treasury unobligated funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in the amount of the reduction in revenue resulting from such credit.

Of course, most supporters of the underlying cash for clunkers extension, including President Obama, want to pass a clean bill without any amendments attached, because any changes to the bill would require agreement from the House, which is on a five-week vacation.

As a Reid spokesperson said yesterday, “Obviously, we don’t want them to pass because then the bill doesn’t go anywhere.”

Expect the clean bill within a few hours.