My daughter has lost all respect for me because, in the past five years, I’ve purchased three cars while my wife, on the other hand, has maintained her 2000 model Honda CRV. I should note here that my daughter still has the first dollar she ever made as a teenage babysitter. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she still has every cent she ever earned in the past fifteen years. Talk about frugal . . .In any case, I leased a GMC Yukon in 2001; it was a deep maroon SUV with every convenience known to the modern world included in the sticker price of . . . um . . . $37K. Of course, I didn’t hear the salesman tell me that the On-Star feature included with the purchase price would expire in a year, so imagine the thrill of receiving a renewal notice asking for $1,500 for an additional three years of service. Always the sucker for gadgets, I might have done it too, were it not for the better half who reminded me that not once had I used the On-Star feature. Okay, so I don’t get lost easily, but it seemed like a great device in the event I was ever kidnapped, or the Yukon stolen, or in the event I needed roadside assistance between my house and place of work, two miles down the road.
As much as I loved that Yukon, the lease payments were funding executive bonuses at GM, so when they called to alert me about a program where I could trade the Yukon in on another GM vehicle, I went over to talk to the salesman — but not the same salesman. Salesmen don’t last very long in dealerships. Have you ever noticed that “tenure” awards are only measured in increments of 30 days? So I ended up driving home a GMC pick-up truck. It was a neat little truck, too, and I was able to cut my monthly payments by a considerable margin.
Was the wife pleased? Not exactly. “What if the kids come home and we want to go out to a restaurant?” she asked.
“We can drive your CRV,” I said.
“Humphf,” she answered.
Eighteen months later, my daughter called and asked if it would be okay if she came home for a long weekend and brought a few of her girlfriends along. “No problem,” I said.
“No problem?” my wife challenged. “How are we going to pick all those people up at the airport in a CRV?”
“Oh.”
So two days later my wife and I visited a local Jeep dealer and purchased a Grande Cherokee. It was a great deal, actually. It was an end-of-year model with all the bells and whistles, except for On Star, which is not offered in Chrysler products. But, it does have a digital compass for those who have time to look at it rather than concentrating on highway traffic, and the on-board computer system tells you exactly, to the mile, how much farther you can travel before running out of gas. Let’s not talk about the payment, though. It gives me gas.
Buying a car is really so much fun. It begins when you arrive at the dealership and before you even exit your old car, Rudy arrives at the side of your car and introduces himself. As much as I try to avoid doing so, it is a pro-forma ritual to shake hands with Rudy, even when you aren’t sure he washes his hands regularly after using the restroom. Rudy always asks the same initial question after introductions. “So, are you interested in a new car?”
“No, I thought I’d stop by for an ice-cream cone,” I answered.
Rudy immediately pegs me as a pain in the ass, and mentally, he’s decided to screw me big time before the conclusion of our negotiations. Not by what he says, of course — but by what he fails to tell me. This is why, after so many years of buying cars, my wife has become accustomed to elbowing me in the ribs at various times during our visit with the new car dealership.
Of course, we are impressed with the opulence of the show room. There is a beautiful stone veneer inside the building, a waterfall on one side of the show-room floor, and a fireplace with the head of a deer denoting that even within the animal kingdom some animals are smarter than others. The floor consists of beautiful inlayed tile imported from Rome, and there is a plush carpet in all offices and stairwells. No expense has been spared presenting a marketing scheme that is clearly second-to-none. “Wow,” I said to my wife, “this place is really nice.”
“It ought to be,” she replied, “you’re paying for it.”
Negotiating a deal on a new car really boils down to a contest of endurance. In this process, you not only meet Rudy, but you also meet his supervisor Fred, and Fred’s supervisor, Theo. You see, since Rudy has only been with the company for three days, he isn’t fully qualified to shove it up your ass, and that’s why Fred takes over once Rudy has explained the benefits of owning Chrysler’s most recent product. What stands out about Fred is that he never quite makes eye contact, so he isn’t “challenging” you in a primordial kind of way. Throughout the entire encounter with Fred, he’s talking to his own belly button. I must confess to having asked Fred if he was talking to me on more than one occasion — resulting in more elbow activity to the rib cage.
Once Fred has negotiated "in good faith," he takes “my offer” to Theo. Another wait of thirty minutes pass before Theo arrives to deliver the “take away.” The take-away is a strategy where he looks at your offer incredulously, and says, “Well, you know we want to sell you this car, but we can’t afford to give it away now can we, ha-ha. Maybe you should think about going with one of our cheaper products.”
The purpose of the take-away is to (1) put you on the defensive, (2) piss you off, or (3) both of the above. “What?” you say, “You don’t think I can afford this model? Well, I’ll show you, buster. I’ll take it right now at full price. In fact, I want On-Star, too!”
Once you’ve successfully negotiated the best price with Theo, there is another hour-long wait while the finance manager, Hank, does all of the paper work. Typically, fifty-five minutes into the wait to meet with Hank, my wife starts having severe hunger pains. She wants to get something to eat, and she wants to do that right now.
“But honey,” I plead, “We’re almost done here. Honest. Let’s get something to eat when we’re done.”
“No.”
So after getting a bite to eat at Wong’s Chinese Lower Digestive System Wrecking Buffet, we return to the dealership to meet with Hank. Hank is almost ready to meet with us. It has now been two full hours since Theo dropped off the vehicle order forms.
Finally, we are ushered into Hank’s office. Hank has been with the company for two years. You know this because there are 24 tenure awards hanging on his office wall next to a picture of his wife and dog, which looks remarkably similar to the picture in Rudy’s office of his wife and his dog.
Copyright, 2005
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