I apologize if you sell cars for a living, but chances are great that no matter where you sell cars, you suck. I realize just as much that you must push and prod and poke and cajole and ask creepy questions along the way, but please. There has to be boundaries. I wanted to share a couple of my recent experiences that should illustrate the point quite nicely.
I am a large person. I’m wide, heavy and not too flexible. This steers me to certain types and sizes of automobiles. There is a counterpoint in that my commute consumes 150 miles per day and up to 3 hours of my time. These points steer me towards other types and sizes of cars. The mileage to efficiency, the time to luxury. My current commuter car is a very basic one, a 2002 Honda Civic EX coupe. I bought it when gas was headed towards $4/gallon and I have not been that happy with it except at the pump. I sometimes feel I have to grease the door frame to slip into it and wear it like a mechanical sport coat on the way to work, but I digress. For most people, my current car would be a superb commuter car. It is even for me, and I will probably keep it, especially after the characters I have met the last few days.
My car search pretty much started out with a suggestion from my father to look into the Chevrolet Impala. This is a big family car that boasts up to 29-30 MPG on the highway which is very respectable for long commutes. It just so happens I was involved in a minor fender bender with my Civic and so I chose the Impala for my rental vehicle for the few days my car was in the shop. The car was powerful and roomy and my family loved it, but I didn’t like it so much. First, the head rest was permanently angled too far forward making it difficult to hold my head up straight. It gave me headaches. Plus the location of the cruise control buttons is right where my thumb likes to rest while cruising, causing me to constantly adjust or cancel cruise control settings unwittingly. Then there is the reality of fuel economy. The Impala, like many other cars on the market today, is capable of high 20’s, but with normal weather, terrain and traffic conditions, it’s not likely you’ll see what’s on the sticker. My Civic gets 32 MPG no matter what. The Impala ranged from 24 to 27MPG, but no better, even if I was very old man like in my driving. It was still in the running though. With a good seat package it could make up for the MPG by being so comfortable. Let me tell you about test driving a new one!
I decided to stop off at a Chevrolet dealer on my way home from work one night. It was kind of late, about 8:30pm, but they were there ’till 9. I took a test drive with a sleazy salesman. I say he was sleazy because he started telling dirty jokes during the test drive. I thought I was going to have to defend myself. It was that creepy. I did my best to be polite which he took as being acceptance of the behavior, so I was rude and told him I was married and had a family. I thought that might make him stop, but he just proceeded to tell me what a horrible person his ex-wife is. I figure she felt about like I did although I couldn’t imaging associating with the guy beyond the test drive. So I decided to try Carmax, right down the road (in Kennessaw, GA) the next night.
Carmax is cool if for no other reason than they have almost everything on the market at any given time. I do believe you have to be careful with their “no haggle” pricing because sometimes the pricing is WAY TOO HIGH!!! Every Marquee is there from Range Rover to Honda and I wanted to check out those Dodge Chargers. I met a super nice sales guy after making a couple laps around their expansive parking lot. He was happy to show me what he had which was not much in the way of Chargers. These cars have low slung roof lines and if you don’t get the power seats you can’t lower your head out of the headliner if you are over 5′ 2″ tall. Who knew. Now this guy was alright all the way around. He did an online search and found a 2009 Charger he could transfer in for me to see in a couple days. I asked him to do that on condition that I was in no way obligated to make a purchase. A few days later he called letting me know it was in and I agreed to come by the next night to see it. He wasn’t there and no one was available to unlock the car or take me on a test drive in it. Oh well. It appeared to be pretty nice on the outside which is a good indication for a Chrysler vehicle. Their paint is typically pretty bad after a year or two on the road, but I couldn’t look at the car very well so it’s out. Mileage is pretty bad on those even though that one had the smaller V6 and had power everything… and was under $17k with 36k miles. One thing I hate about the ‘09 Chrysler products… they came new with a LIFETIME warranty to the initial owner. When they were sold or traded in, they revert to 3/36. No fair! There are not many new ones left, and the new prices are way too high. Anyway, my despair was rising pretty high at this point, but there is more to the story, yet.
So I’ve had a creep and a no show for salesmen, but both were at what I guess you’d call lower tier dealers. Carmax and Chevy are both respectable, but they are not BMW, right? My dad sent me a Carmax listing for an AWD 525 BMW which I dismissed at first. It was around $25k which is about $10k more than I was wanting to spend outside of my trade-in allowance. But after a while it started to sink in. I’m not new to BMW but I had written them off as being outside reasonable for myself, but I was drawn to them again. MY first BMW was a 1984 528E and it was the coolest car I have ever been in. It was fun to drive and, like my Civic, got 30MPG no matter how I drove it. We later got a 1995 325I and it was about the same as the old 5 series except it was smaller. They hug the road, are powerful, relatively reliable and are freaky nice. So I decided to go to Global Imports BMW around the corner from work. They are snooty and all that but their cars are at least nice (usually). I told the sales person, a gentleman named “Bob”, that I was looking for something older. They had a 2003 525I listed with about 80k miles on it for about $12k and I wanted to see it. He acted as though he didn’t know what I was talking about and offered to let me look at a cherry “sub $10k” LS400 Lexus. I told him I would be worried about fuel economy and was looking to stay closer to 30MPG. Although that Lexus was nothing but nice. An older couple had traded it in recently. It was a 1996 model with just over 100k miles on it. Sweet. Looked brand new. But I’ll pass anyway, thanks. The next thing I know I am looking at a Certified Pre-Owned 2006 525I. We took it around the block and I completely fell in love with it. I mean completely. It was $25k and was all ME! I still want it. I’ve had a couple dreams about it. Under BMW warranty until 100k miles and it had about 48k on the clock. Perfect! It was about the same as the Carmax car, but was certified and was rated higher for reliability than the AWD version. But when I told Bob I needed to bring my wife in to look too and be a part of the decision, he invited me to sit at his desk. He started filling out a credit application! I told him that I didn’t mean to offend him, but that I was not prepared to do anything that night and repeated that I needed my wife to be there. He started pressuring me saying that was the only 2006 he had and that it would likely sell pretty quickly. He refused to give me a final price on the car as if he expected me to pay whatever they stuck on the windshield. Oh well. So much for that one.
Three turds and no new car. But now I have resolve in another direction entirely. My Civic was repaired and now it looks brand new. I cleaned it up. On top of that, last summer the A/C died in it. Well, the compressor started smoking on the way in to work the other day, so I put it in the shop and dropped the grand on it to get that fixed too. Now it’s comfortable again, cleaned up and respectable… I want to just keep it.
I’d have thought a salesman at a BMW dealer would have operated on a higher plane than the other guys, but this is just not so. I am not white trash so it’s not my projection to them, they just are all pushy little instigators.
Now here’s some funny. I use Google voice. If you give someone that number, and they start calling you at all hours like the pushiest of them all… Chris at Jim Ellis Volkswagen… you can block them. Now if he calls me again, he’ll get the recording as if I had not paid my phone bill. LOL. He told me the day I test drove a TDI Jetta that if I purchased a car THAT NIGHT he could give me a special rate on it and promised me FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS on my trade, sight unseen. Yeah right. The next day he started calling, promising me the same exact deal. Stick it is what I say. The TDI Jetta looks good but cost of ownership, even with the pseudo maintenance thrown in the first three years, is still too high.
So anyway.