My dad told me about a customer of his at his Lincoln-Mercury dealership that would buy a new Lincoln every year, sometimes every 2 years. The gentleman owned an oil field and all sorts of storage tanks one town over from dad's dealership. A golden customer, never dickered, just wrote checks and drove away, always happy. Dad hated to trade his cars though he told me. They were sooo beat. Always came in with very low mileage, 15-20,000 miles but the rugs were saturated with grease and oil, the rocker panels on his suicide door Lincolns were always bashed in, lower moldings knocked off, and the undercarriage caked in mud. It was all dirt road driving and splashing thru a lot of mud and oil. The seats on all his cars were tightly wrapped since new in those clear covers that were so popular in the 50's and 60's. Those were always clean. Dad would always have the rockers straightened or replaced, put on new rocker molding's, and replace the carpets. A major shampoo job, a buff and wax and a new set of whitewalls and it could be offered for sale. Executive driven Continental 4 doors were desirable property in the 50's and 60's. It took a lot of work to make this guy's Lincoln's hit the target Dad would tell me and sometimes that oil smell would come back on a hot summer day. Dad schooled me on this philosophy that anyone can fix or rebuild the exterior of an automobile. A bad interior is a whole 'nuther can o' worms. Sometimes better off not getting involved with.
LOL interiors can be a real mess. When I was a kid there was a guy with a used car lot in San Francisco, Crazy Sam or Charlie or Crazy something. he had the late nite commercials where he was always whacking a car with an ax or a chain saw or something else off the wall and cutting prices or ready to hammer out a deal. His lot was down near Army Street incase someone my age from the bay area remembers. Anyway so much for back ground, he had this caddy that sat on his lot about forever. It always had a ton of those little Christmas tree deodorizers hanging in it. Story goes that one of the local mobsters got himself whacked and they didn't find him for a week or two. The stink never goes away.
Years ago there was an old farmer around here who was a legendary penny pincher. Around 1972 he went to the Dodge dealer and bought the cheapest pickup truck he could get. Base model with NO options. When he found out you could buy a cab and chassis with no box his eyes lit up. He bought the cab and chassis and made his own flatbed out of used lumber.
You are so right about smells that never leave a car. There was a used car dealer that I used to see weekly at Concord Auto Auction in the early 80's I think his name was Variety Auto Sales or something like that. His specialty was late model muscle cars. Corvettes, Trans Am's all models of Camaro's and stuff of that nature. I recall looking at a "Bandit" Trans Am he had one day. Car was all black, gold colored screaming chicken on the hood. It was gorgeous...... but the smell , it was overpowering! Have you ever smelled a car after it was burned? Have you ever taken a real deep breath in the junk yard? Then you know what I'm talking about. I noticed as the summer wore on he brought truck loads of cool muscle cars to the auction and in almost all cases they smelled of junk yard. I finally one day took a strong interest in an Anniversary 2 tone 78 Corvette he had. I loved this thing but it too had that stink that was a warning sign. I threw my question right in his face finally. "Is this car a prior salvage?" I asked He replied it was and he also showed me a red with a white interior 1979 L82 he was trying hard to push on me. Both cars were flawless, looked better than the way G.M could build them. Straight, no ripples, perfect paint and shine. He told me truthfully he splice 4 wrecks into 2 beautiful Corvettes. You could not tell except for that distinctive salvage yard smell. (Oh, and a little bit of welded up splicing on the front frames near the firewall area).
I really can't argue with most of what Hnstray has said, but you can usually tell which side of the table people have sat in the car sales game. I don't have a dog in this piss'n match but; there is a reason car sales(people) and pit bulls have (bad) reputations, they earned them.
Ya know I really don't have a problem with car sales people in general, most of the time in my experience if you let them know up front that you are only there to buy a car minus hype and BS they will respect that. They are just people trying to earn a living. Seems like there is always that one who's mother didn't have any children that lived. Those guys sour even the most die hard shoppers. I wouldn't have a problem buying from Ray by the way. Doubtful he will ever have anything in my price range but I wouldn't have a problem dealing with him. His momma raised him right.
Personally I have no problem with salesmen or dealers either. As the saying goes "some of my best friends are car salesmen". It just gripes me that business try to add-on expenses in the back end of a deal. A deal is supposed to be a deal, with each side absorbing their own expenses. Adding on "documentation fees" beyond tax and title fees is just ridiculous in my book. When I go to dealers, I know what I want and what I will pay. There is no "selling" involved. I do pity the clueless masses that wander into dealerships though, you never know what they're gonna drive away with and neither do they.
Well Mike you and I are in the same canoe here, a deal is a deal even if it hurts to keep your end of the bargain. Any operating expenses are overhead for a legit business the customer ultimately pays for them but it is not as a side deal it is part of the cost of the services. How would it be if someone came by here for a tune up and the when he came after his car I said, "oh hey the city says I need a special red car license and you own a red car so that'll be X dollars extra to cover my license."
You can extend the same argument to any business. Buy groceries and the cashier adds on a "cashier fee", like WTF? The best is when you get a $25 traffic ticket and the miscellaneous add-ons are $130.
(to readers, you'll have to 'expand' the above post to see the comments I am addressing) Gary Terharr, Given your objection to my posts, perhaps you would like to explain how yours differs from mine. (you have posited an opinion, no contribution to the theme of the thread, in case you don't understand what I said) In addition to which, you either ignore, or may fail to comprehend, that my comments are not so much about me, but to provide some balance to the one sided, prejudicial views that have dominated the theme here. There are undesirable characters and practices in every otherwise useful human activity. You need only read or watch the news to see daily examples of it. Just look around, first in the mirror, and then widen your view. It's everywhere. So, do you condemn all, or just those that are guilty of whatever offense you have noted? Let me be more specific. I fully recognize that some of the dealer practices described in this thread are fairly accurate and I dislike them as much as the people who are complaining about them. I know some customers get taken advantage of. I disapprove of that too. But, I also KNOW, not from hearsay, not from embellished anecdotes, that there are far more reputable and honorable dealers and sales people than one would think after reading these one sided posts. I also know the vast majority of customers are more satisfied than not, especially when they have realistic expectations. I am not defending myself so much as the good people in the business who are not reading this thread, are not recounting their experiences with unscrupulous customers. Of the latter, I can assure you, there are plenty of stories to be told. The most offensive aspect of many posts in this thread is the complete and unabashed double standard. The very people who are delightfully telling how they trashed a car,or hoodwinked their employer, etc. etc, ad nauseum, do not see their hypocrisy when, in the same posts, they cast aspersions on the business in which they work. Who, other than them, is more guilty of committing "dealership sins"? Not the dealer, apparently, but his ignorant, delinquent employees. I'd suggest that the employers among us HAMBers start a thread called "employee stories". That could be a real hoot!.....but it would be just as OT as this whole thread has been from the start. Ray
Okay, I have another body shop tale, again when I worked for an independent shop. This shop was located in a very old building, that had been converted from a livery stable into a Buick dealer, perhaps in the '30's. It was a 2 story deal, and had columns supporting a poured reinforced concrete floor in the lower level, which was my work area. We got a hi-top conversion van in one day, and try as I might, I can't remember what it came in for. Sometime in the 1960's, one of the support columns was removed, to make maneuvering a little easier, and it was replaced with an 18" I-beam for a header. Well, here comes me, sailing into the basement of this place, and I get jerked to an abrupt halt under this I-beam. You prolly guessed it, yep, the hi-top conversion van was firmly wedged underneath the I-beam. Thankfully, after letting some air out of the tires, it came free. The only damage was two small scratches about an 1/8th inch wide, around 4 inches long. I spotted those in, and was the butt of many a joke for a long time afterward.
I, personally, have never worked at a new car dealership. I did work for a gent who had a used car business though. This was back in the early '80's, when a person could make good money repairing totaled cars and trucks. Now this guy had it covered, with a towing service, a wrecking yard, a nice body shop with a good frame rack, and a large pole building full of reproduction parts. GM intermediates were very hot at the time, Cutlasses and Grand Prix's being the most popular in that neck of the woods. If we didn't have the needed parts in the yard or warehouse, we would have to repair, sometimes repairing doors and quarters that had previously been cast aside. A large number of those rebuilds would be built from 4 or 5 different cars. Too many shoddy builders brought the good times to an end by 1987 in my old home state, and a total carried a salvage title from then on. I will say this; A PROPERLY repaired vehicle is nothing to be afraid of, but choose your shop carefully.
One more body shop tale. In the mid '90's, I started working at a large shop in a good-sized Midwestern city. Still going strong today, at that time there were 5 CSR's, writing estimates all day, a body shop foreman, a paint shop foreman, 18 bodymen, 11 painters, and 5 to 6 detail guys (they seemed to come and go pretty regularly), and 100 to 150 cars (or more) on the lot waiting their turn. Now to me, a good tech has few, if any, "comebacks". The last thing a good one wants is to be labeled "The Comeback King". Even if I had to come up short on flagged hours, it was going to be done right, the customer deserves that. Well, lo and behold, there was a King at this place, and his stalls were always full of light, easy hits. I asked the body shop foreman about this, and he replied that he turned out more hours than the rest of us, and chastised me for doing too good a job. He could tell I was doing too good a job because "you don't have enough comebacks". Crazy.
As I mentioned before, I don't have any actual dealership experience, but I think all of my tales could have happened at one In 1980, a family friend purchased 2 Texaco stations, and hired a bunch of us neighborhood hoolums to work for him. One day, while doing a brake job on a Vega, I had the passenger door open while it was up on a lift. Getting frustrated with a self-adjuster on the rear, I stood up as I cussed at the pile, and promptly hit my head on the bottom of the open door. Hit it hard enough that I hit the floor, and split my head open good enough to require stitches. Feeling absolutely like crap the next day, I did a tune-up on a '69 Chevy pickup, that was waiting on a master cylinder. The master cylinder was completely removed a couple days before, so it had no brakes. Feeling rather cheery from tuning it up, and still goofy from the day before, I jumped halfway in and fired it up. In gear. Without an interlock on the clutch. It lit right up, and sailed right smack into the rear wall. Fortuantely, the hood was up, and I only had to replace the bumper and the grill. From that day to this, I always have my foot on the brake pedal when starting anything.
At the same Texaco mentioned above, our benevolent owner purchased a 1 ton tow truck for us to use. The old girl ran pretty good, but needed some exhaust work. One of the guys pulled it in, and placed it on the lift. Now there were 2 good-sized bays at Friendly Texaco, one with a lift, and one without. In between, bolted to the ceiling, was a tire rack, you know the kind. Made from 2-inch pipe, it ran the full distance between the 2 bays. Well, Bobby had opened the passenger door, and forgot to close it before raising the truck. When he raised it, the open door caught the tire rack. He did get it shut down before it came completely off the lift, but it put a pretty good bend in the top of the door. The owner witnessed the whole affair, and our next assignment was to remove the tire rack.
I stopped one evening at another service station, where my buddy was just getting done changing the points and condenser on a Karmann Ghia. The car's owner came along a few minutes later, and asked my friend how it was coming along. My friend fired it up to show him how much better it ran. Suddenly, a funny look came on his face, and he shut the car down. Seems he was also changing the oil in the car, and had drained it but had not refilled it yet. The owner received a new engine over that one.
At the large body shop I mentioned earlier, the owner would occasionally buy and repair totals to use for rental cars. He opened a satellite location after I had been there for about a year, and sent some of us to run it. The manager came up to me one day, bragging on a (totaled) Grand Am he just made a deal on buying from the customer. He wanted to know how much I wanted to repair it. I gave him what I thought it would take hourwise, and went home for the weekend. Came back to work the following Monday, and was surprised to see the Grand Am right out front, beat to the point where there was nothing left that was usable, bodywise. It turned out that the owner had a policy that prevented the manager from buying wrecks through work. Unknown to us, he had a camera and recording equipment in the office. He came out that weekend, and reviewed what was recorded, took an aluminum bat to the poor car, and fired the manager. As beat up as the car was, his hands had to hurt for a good while. I always wondered how the shop owner handled the customer, because the manager had only negotiated a price, but had not made the purchase yet.
To keep this simple Ray, yes I did contribute earlier in this thread on topic I may add. As far as the rest of your ramble, the only thing I agree with you is yes there are many types in all occupations good and bad,but that's just human nature. You just seem to feel the need to point out the bad and describe it eloquently I do say ,how much better of a person you are than them. This will be the last post from me Ray to you on this,keep up the good work. May I suggest running for office of some kind,you seem to have a lot of time on your hands and meet most of the useless requirements.
Ray, A thread titled "Dealer Stories" simply isn't going to generate many stories praising dealers. This doesn't mean that anybody thinks that most dealers are bad people. Relax. Maybe you should visit "Funniest lines from the parts counter" to get a more balanced count of outrageous stories. Back on-topic with an off-topic car story: So I special ordered an OT car from overseas. One really cool thing was the salesman gave me a tracking number and a website where I could monitor the progress of the build and the shipping. On the same day the website said it arrived in port, the salesman emailed me pictures of the car still partially wearing its protective white plastic sheeting. I take delivery of the car and stop at my friend's house on the way home. His wife says "are they gonna fix that dent?". Sure enough, there's a dent in the lower corner of the rear bumper that I never saw (or ever expected to see). So now I get on the phone with the dealer who says it couldn't have happened there because I inspected the car before I took delivery. Sure enough, looking back closely at the salesmans' pictures, the dent was there. Obviously I won that argument, but it could easily have turned out differently.
You guys are wearing me out! You read my words and then interpret them to fit your preconceived notions. I wouldn't expect such a thread to be all about praising dealers! But should it be only about bashing dealers? Give me a break! Either way, praise or condemnation, I don't see how it fits the HAMB's stated purpose of supporting the "traditional builds.....circa Noah's time to about 1964". The thread is not even directly about automobiles, much less on topic automobiles, but about automobile dealers. I understand the pop culture tendency to bash lawyers, politicians and automobile dealers. It's "old news" ! On second thought, there is some mention made in the "HAMB Creed" about hoodlums! Ray
I have a couple to add... Worked at an Olds dealer during the summers in high school 83-85 as the lot boy. We're getting a new load of cars delivered. The first car off the upper deck of the hauler is a big regency/98 station wagon. The ramps aren't secured right and the car comes off sideways, landing on the rear end, shoving the bumper up through the third row seat etc... We pull the car off using tow chains and the wrecker, drag it to the back lot where it sits for about a month. The local salvage yard delivers the back half of a 1yr older wagon to the back lot as well. Yup, they backhalfed it and sold if for new. They even had the balls to put it on the showroom floor. The poor guy that bought it got a great 'deal' and was telling his wife all about it when they picked it up. Scary...
Same dealer, same timeframe - the used car manager was Doug, and he was so cool. My normal ride was a 72 pinto, but there was this hot girl I was trying to get and figured my car might not be helping things. So I 'borrowed' a trans am from the used car lot for lunch and proceeded to get a date with her. I went back in and talked to Doug, he said I could use if for the weekend and if anyone asked I was giving it an extended road test. He set me up with cars for 3 years. Vettes, trans am, mustangs, caddy - whatever I wanted. the only rule was I had to bring the girls by for him to check out (perv) but hell I didn't care. When I left the dealership to go off to college Doug's going away present to me was a bottle of spot remover since I'd be using the same back seat from then on... And- also from my 'Doug' library. we used to go up to the auto auction in Indy on Tuesdays. Me, Doug, another salesman and the other lot boy would all go up in a big car or wagon and Doug would buy new sportier cars for the used lot. On the way home he'd tell us to 'ring em out'. So we'd basically race from Indy back to Louisville down I-65. So I'm in a V-6 Fiero gt hauling ass keeping up with the other lot boy in a vette. got to be doing 125 or so down the freeway when my car starts to miss a little. I look in the rear view mirror and the whole tail of the car is on fire, huge trail of black smoke billowing. I pull it over and the damn thing burns to the ground on the side of I-65 near Henryville. Doug stops by a few minutes later and says 'Well, can't sell that one can we?' I hopped in his car and off we went. Cool guy
Ray and everyone else for that matter ( I just like ray and probably not most of you guys) bashing is easy and I personally don't or wouldn't have a problem bashing anyone that has ever drawn a breath. I prefer to reflect on the things in my life that have had a good outcome, but the truth is that the other creatures in my species have not treated me well in general. I have had more fun than most of you guys, obviously, so it is pretty easy for me to come up with something that came out alright. All that said I still think that the guy that crapped in the dart was pretty damned funny. you guys should have given me a like or two on that one.
another story- same place as above. I'm prepping a new Toronado for delivery. Every option on it, manager tells me to be careful, it's the most expensive car they've ever sold. As I'm finishing the wax the new owner drops by the detail bay to wait. He's cool and talks to me as I finish going over the car and he asks me not to put the dealer decal plate on. Hell, it's his car, I don't care so I don't. Customer is always right correct? Well the owner's son is the new car manager(Rick) and sees the car leave without the dealer decal plate. He loses it, cusses me out in front of everyone in the showroom, just goes off on me. Then he goes to the closet, gets a box of the damn things and tells me to make sure very car on the lot has one. So, off I go, pissed off. I put one on every used car, every new car, every car in service, every car in the body shop, customer cars, personal cars, visitor cars and even his sister's Porche. Damn he was pissed when he found out what I did. Luckily Doug and the owner's wife(Ricks mom) stood up for me.
LOL I have found in life that people in Management often have bad judgment, that is why I seldom do what I am told.
we got a new sales guy, and he was pretty much a jerk. I'd tried to just steer clear of him and do my job but eventually he ticked me off. He was finally getting a demo after his trial period was over. He took great pains to tell me exactly how he wanted his car detailed, etc because he had a hot date that night. So I take his car, clean it etc... he checks it, agrees it's fine and I head off for the night. But I know something he doesn't. I swapped the car with an identical one and changed out the stock number tag. So after everyone had gone he couldn't get in his car. Did I mention that I took the keys to the lock box we kept all the keys in so he couldn't get the spares... left his a$$ stranded. Sunday evening I go back to the dealership, swap the cars back, change the stock tags and set the lock box back. I come back on Monday and he's reading the manager the riot act.. They call me over and I act surprised. I grab his key from him, walk out to the car and open it up. 'I don't see the problem' I said and walked away. Dickhead only lasted a few months before they tossed him.
one last one for now. The owner of the Olds dealer was basically retired. He and his wife Melody would stop in once a week and I'd always stop what I was doing and clean their cars for them while they visited. They were super nice, even though their son and daughter who ran the place day-to day were kind of harsh. One night, while on a date (in one of Doug's cars) it's pouring down rain and my girl(Abby) and I see a car pulled to the side of the road with a flat. Long before cell phones... I recognize the car right away, it's Melody. She's got the only pink Olds 88 I'd ever seen. I pull over, tell her to get in the car with Abby to stay dry while I change the tire for her in the rain. I get it done, I'm dirty and soaked, but she thanks me and heads on home. The owner thanked me profusely the next time he saw me and I figured that was the end of it. But from then on Melody would always bring me some cookies or something when she came by to visit. About a month later she sees me, we chat. I'm kinda down, I need to get Abby a gift for her birthday. I don't have much spare money since I'm saving for school. She listens, tells me everything will work out and gives me some cookies. 3 days later she hands me an envelope and tells me she got Abby's gift for me. Inside are 2 tickets to see Cats (the broadway show) where it was playing one night in Cincinnati. $200 tickets back in the 80's. Hell I was only making $150 a week!. I was shocked. She said her and Abby talked while I was changing her tire that night, and she knew how much Abby liked theatre, so she got me those tickets to a sold out show. Later on she wrote me a great letter for college admissions, pretty much had Doug 'give' me a reliable car for school off the used lot($50) and gave me a huge 'thank you' bonus on my final day. All because I changed a tire for her in the rain.
The Jalopy Journal
