Whats your best "used car salesman" or dealer story?

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

Absolutely no one does. I had an '08 LX manual that the dealership I bought it from couldn't give away.

Damn was that thing dependable, though. Great MPG, too. Seats were horrible.

lotusseven7 said:

Anyone ever have an experience at a dealership where a salesman wouldn't speak to your wife when she is buying a car?

The last couple times my wife went to buy a car, the salesman (typically older), comes straight to me. I tell them immediately that we're only here because she's interested in a car and she's buying it. Don't talk to me, talk to her. The moment they talk to her, I wonder off and act clueless.

Not so funny: Same very large dealership in the early 70s. The large used car repair shop had two mechanics that repaired clocks. The repair order mileage was the mileage they would reset the odometer to read. This was practice was stopped mid 70s and mechanics were reassigned to our shop.

I'm going back with this one, and I'm not even sure of the year.  My austin healey bugeyed sprite has an awful noise and finally the engine explodes.  I'm totally screwed because I'm just out of the army and doing home care physical therapy.  I need a car.

I'm off to the honda dealer and see this weird looking half sized car.  I think it's funny looking, but then it grows on my.  It is the first year of the honda CRX.  For whatever reason I'm off to Providence RI and end up buying my first new car, a blue honda CRX.  My car friends are furious I have spent so much on a car, but that is another story.  I am freaked out at having a new car and I ask my salesman, Vinnie if I should do the first oil change myself, or go to the dealer.  He tells me that I need to have the dealership do it.  He says there might be, "burrs" on the engine that they need to take care of.  I nod politely and walk away.

A few months later I'm at the same dealership with my roommate at the time, and he is buying a nice honda as well.  He has money to burn, so he has every upgrade he can get and buys a new set of rims as well.  I see Vinnie off to the side looking very upset.  We did not ask for him when we returned to the dealership.  He says that we should have asked for him because he would have, "done something" for my friend.  I'm super young, so I don't ask why he didn't "do something for me".   However, I clear my throat and as, "remember the burrs?"  He turned and walked away.  He is probably the top salesman in Providence, or dead now.  No other options.

This was during the years when you just put a deposit down on an accord and waited until it showed up.  I don't remember if they marked them up, but it was nice to be a honda salesman.  In RI they didn't really know what the CRX was yet.   I loved that car and at least was able to zing the salesman.

The local GM dealership where we bought our Avalanche back in '02 has given us a few good stories.

Buying it was great. We wanted one before they were even released. A guy I knew was a salesman there, and we drove one with him soon after they came out. Waited a while, and then when the 0%/60 mo offers came, we decided to buy. Called them up from work, my friend was off that day so I got a manager. Turns out to be THE SALES MANAGER. We tell him what we want, down to the last option. He says he'll see what's available, but since we want blue, it will have to special ordered, since the Owner won't let them order blue vehicles for stock. WTH? We joke about it, but it was absolutely true. So he calls back later that day, he found EXACTLY what we want at another dealership and they will trade. We haggle a little, everybody is happy, he brings it in the next day for us to inspect. It's great, we buy it. He was great to work with. He even gave my friend 1/2 credit for the sale.

I was back in there less than a year later, and asked one of the mgmt guys I saw if <salesguy> was around. He says "who?" I tell him again, first and last name. He tells me he's been here a long time and they've never had anybody by that name there. I pull out <salesguys> business card from my wallet, and he goes "huh" and walks off.

There's a lot of turnover there, but still. Guy was the freaking Sales Manager. And he's now a figment of my imagination. Right.

Oh, do I have a tale for you!

Let us whisk ourselves back to the year 1999 in the lovely month of June. The 17 year old version of me had just suffered defeat at the hands of the Blue Oval. The Ford AOD in my beat-to-hell $250 1987 Cougar XR7 I had purchased just two months before decided reverse was overrated, and it chunked itself right in my driveway. Knowing that the car was an epic turd from day one (it was cheaper to buy the entire running car than replacing the gas tank in my 1964 Buick Skylark), I had been saving here and there for its inevitable replacement. On the day it exploded, I was already going to scout out replacements with some friends, so it was no sweat off my back.

First stop was a local junkyard. They had just taken in a 1979 Olds Cutlass 2-door into the yard. The car was lovely, wearing Parision Brothel Burgundy paint over a white and red interior. It only had 87k on the odo, and it drove great. I said no to that because it had a bench seat. Ghast, a bench seat!!! Monumentally stupid, and I'd love to go back in time and slap the hell out of myself for not buying that one. 

The next stop was a shady tow lot in an even shadier part of town that sold some VERY suspect jalopies. Out front was a bright red 1987 IROC-Z. NOW WE'RE TALKING. No bench seats here! A peek inside the car revealed that the previous owners fitted a 8" chrome chain link steering wheel straight from Cheech & Chong's custom van. Sweet! And popping that louvered hood revealed a mystery small block Chevy with a carb slapped on in place of the Tuned Port Injection, because FuEl InJeCtIoN AnD cOmPuTeRs Iz DuMb!!!11!11!!! When they couldn't get it running after 45min of "Just give me a sec, khed, it runs great dood, had it running this morning guy" I hopped in my friend's car and drove to the next stop. That dudeguy is probably still turning wrenches on it 21 years later in front of that shop. 

On the way home, we see a freshly rolled out of who-knows-where 1979 Z28 at another extremely suspect used car lot we had already passed by earlier. Where did that thing come from? It was red and black with custom paint and some sweet 80's sawblade wheels. You know I had to stop! We get out of the car, and look it over. It has a custom interior consisting of extremely deep pile velour that used to be red at one point, but had faded to purple. EVERYTHING was covered in it: the dash, the headliner, the seats, and even the floors. The back package tray had a giant hole where a 10" subwoofer once resided. When a friend tried to pop the hood, the popper was missing. So, he looked at the VIN to see if it had a 350 or a lowly 305, and, well...

There was no VIN.

At that moment, we hear a gruff Bahston accent boom from the garage bay of the lot: "Theah's no VIN, the Staties got it". For those who don't speak MA-hole, Staties = Massachusets State Police.

Oh.

"Why do the Staties have the VIN?" My dumb self asked. I had to know.

"This cah used to belong to a guy I knew from Weymouth. HE RAN COKE IN THE 80's.* He needed somethin' faster than the cahps, so I built him a sweet 350 with all the speed pahts. This thing was faaaaaast dood". He then opened the hood and a crusty 350 with anodized Moroso valve covers and those terrible wing nut valve cover studs, clearly built around 1983, greeted us. "It runs mint, khed, but ya gotta deal with the Staties if ya wanna drive it on the street". After being intrigued for about 1/3rd of a second, I tucked tail, hopped in the car, and never looked back. I did not buy a car that day.

*Ever see the movie Blow? You know, the one starring Johnny Depp about noted drug trafficker George Jung? Guess whose hometown was Weymouth, MA? Yup, that guy. This was probably his car!




 

Last summer I was looking for a C5 z06, it's a nice Saturday and one comes up for sale near a good fishing spot about an hour from my house. The wife is out town so a day of fly fishing and corvette shopping sounds great.

It's at a dealer 55k miles, $16k and in the pictures it looks pretty good. I grab my fishing gear, take the t-tops off my 92' camaro and head out. When I get to the dealer, I don't see it but I head in and ask if it's on the lot. A young sales guy, like early 20s helps me out. He comments about how he's never seen a 3rd Gen camaro that's as nice as mine and says something like "I'm guessing you know cars, so I'm just going to be straight with you, this z06 is a piece of E36 M3" I was blown away..... we get to the back of the lot and man he was not kidding. That poor thing had a hard life. The trunk was full of water, all the wheels were curbed.

I looked at the sales guy and told him I could do like $7k max. He doesn't blink and tells me that could happen. I give the car a hard look and decided to just walk away. 

In 2006 my wife (girlfriend then) went with her stepdad who knows nothing about cars and purchased a giant pile of E36 M3 02 Grand Prix. She gets tired of the problems and asks me too go look at cars with her. The local GM dealer offers her decent trade in even after I explain the problems. They had a pair of 04 ions just off lease for sale. Same price but different interior options. 
 

we leave to talk it over, I've never been a fan of payments so we decide and go back 2 days later. Suddenly her trade in is worth 50% of its original value and they no longer have the grey interior car. We get fed up and leave. A few days go past and I get a random call out of the blue, one of the salesmen there is brothers with a guy I work with. I tell him I'm not buying the car but she wanted the grey cloth interior car and it's no longer available. 
 

he tells me it's still there it was in detail and he's not sure why they claimed it wasn't. We go in that evening and not only did he give her the original trade in price he took 2k off the price of the car. We owned it for 12 years and didn't go back too that dealer because he no longer worked there. The local ford dealer was a lot easier to deal with for the escape. It was painless in comparison 

lotusseven7 said:

Anyone ever have an experience at a dealership where a salesman wouldn't speak to your wife when she is buying a car?

Still standard practice at the Nissan dealer by my house. When we were shopping for a new car for my mom went to look at versa, I was just there to listen for weird noises and make sure it wasn't a CVT, and made that point known, dealer never once talked to my mom. I hear it from everyone I know that goes there, they won't sell to women for whatever reason.

When I was looking to replace my 89 Trans Am, the wife and I drove past a chevy dealer with a Mustang rag top out front with a $250/month payment sign on it. Go in and look and it turns out they wanted to lease the used Mustang for $250. Tell him we were looking for a Mustang/fbody used around $10000 to get the payments in the $250/ month range. The salesman says you won't find one anywhere. As we are pulling off the lot we spot a red Firebird in the dealership next door. Go over and look and price on the sticker is $12000. A salesman comes out and first thing he says is I can sell it to you today for $10000. And yes we bought it.

To be fair, I did have a (single) positive experience when I was looking for a new truck in 06. It started out that nobody wanted to sell me one.  Nissan was my first choice, but I shopped them all ending with GM, which was my last choice at the time. Even they wouldn't sell me one, but after seeing them all, looking at pricing, I went back to the same GM dealer that never did call me back and met with a different salesman.

I introduced myself and told him, this is where I've been, this is what I want, and I am ready to buy today. He found the exact truck I wanted a few hours away, we hammered out the price, did the paperwork, and he promised that I'd have the truck my next day off. I showed up on time and there it was. He was 100%  professional, didn't leave me with any questions and did everything he said he would. And the whole thing probably took less than an hour.

A few years ago, a new friend of mine told me about a saleswoman that talked too much about her personal life, when she (the friend) was helping her friend find a motorcycle. Saleswoman was going on and on about how she was divorcing her husband. My friend was thinking, "Geez, TMI, woman." They didn't buy a bike that day. 

The best part about the story is that it wasn't until a year later that I filed for divorce from that saleswoman. ​​

RealMiniNoMore said:

A few years ago, a new friend of mine told me about a saleswoman that talked too much about her personal life, when she (the friend) was helping her friend find a motorcycle. Saleswoman was going on and on about how she was divorcing her husband. My friend was thinking, "Geez, TMI, woman." They didn't buy a bike that day. 

The best part about the story is that it wasn't until a year later that I filed for divorce from that saleswoman. ​​

I was expecting it to go somewhere else

I’ve got a couple interesting dealer stories. 

The first is when I bought my new Nissan Titan in ‘04. My wife and I know exactly what we wanted- colors, options, price. We checked the local dealers first to see if they could get what we wanted. Ones said they would have it the next day. Saw the window sticker, everything was perfect. Did the paperwork and bought the truck, intending on picking it up the next day. The next morning, they said to come on down and pick it up. We get there, and they said it’s not ready yet- still getting the PMI done. Okay, we wait. And wait. They ask if we can come back later. No problem. Later on, back at the dealer- not ready. Really? Can we at least see it? No?!? We had them tear up the contract. Never did find out what was going on, we bought the truck elsewhere. Met someone later that used to work there, and he said the frequently pulled shady stunts- covering up damage on cars. 

The second was when shopping for our new ‘05 Legacy GT wagon. My wife was test driving it, and the salesman would not stop criticizing my wife’s shifting. He was like an impatient father teaching his daughter how to drive a stick. Except my wife wasn’t his daughter, and she had no problem driving her Eclipse GSX or autocrossing the Miata- or any other of the long list of manual transmission cars she’s owned. He actually pulled the car out of gear at a stop light because he said she was “hurting the clutch” by having it in gear at the light! She snapped at him, and was pissed off on the drive back to the dealership. She said she would have done a high rpm clutch dump, but didn’t want to take it out on the car that we would not be buying from them. She lit up the manager of the dealership instead and got him fired. 

Scoured the earth for a 540i 6 speed in my (low) price range and found a small time shade tree dealer listing one online in a beautiful shade of green (happened to have a zender body kit that was saweet).

Had bought a cheap Range Rover previously to impress the ladies (it worked) from my brother (thanks alot bro) but had enough of the CONSTANT issues that I never had time to fix which I was planning to trade in. Closed the deal over email and drove to Chicago to do the swap. Enroute to the dealership 6 plus hours away, the windshield cracked due to a huge rock from a dump truck and the ABS light came on so I thought I was screwed. 

Dealer took my car for a test drive and once he got back told me he could still do the deal but the windshield and ABS module would need replaced so he would need to deduct 500 bucks. Couldn't sign the contract fast enough........

Windshield is heated (elements embedded in the glass) and was ATLEAST 2500 dollar dealer only item at the time I believe.

Oh, and that 540 started my long love affair with BMWs (8 so far) that has culminated with a 2000 m5 (with 19k miles) and a 92 world challenge 325i with a finally completed LS swap though the m5 is going to get listed soon so I can buy a house :-(.

Boost_Crazy said:

Met someone later that used to work there, and he said the frequently pulled shady stunts- covering up damage on cars. 

 

I forgot about this!  I was going to buy an RX-8 R3 down in Charlotte. I'd been talking with them online and over the phone and was going to drive down to check out the car when I got a message from the Internet Sales dude that there was a problem.



Apparently one of the lot jockeys had crashed it into the building. They said they were going to fix it and would call me when they had it ready again. A bit of time went by, I got the call and... no change in the price. They'd done the repair in house, so it never hit the Carfax or anything. I just passed on it.
 

Not really a salesperson story but a dealership story. A few years ago I picked up an older clean one owner Hyundai Accent for my oldest Daughter. I did brakes and some front end work and dropped it off at our local Hyundai dealer to have it certified. My friend is a mechanic there so he was to do the inspection when he got the chance. I dropped by the following week to see if he'd had a chance to take a look at it yet. He said maybe later that week, no worries  since I'm in no rush. I figure I'll wander around the back of the lot to see what they've got in on trade. I don't spot my kids car. It's a busy place so I don't worry about it but I send my buddy a text asking him where her car is. An hour later he sends me a note that the manager will be calling me. Turns out he decided to clear some space in the lot and sent a bunch of what he thought were unsellable trade ins to the wrecker. My kids car was among them. They wrote us a cheque for well over fair market value and he was invited to find other employment.

I worked as a lot porter for a Chevy dealership one summer, washing and moving around the used cars. But, that also meant grabbing lunch for the managers and salespeople, driving to pick up newly off-lease purchases by the dealer, etc.

The most awkward thing I ever had to do was drive a finance manager back to his house, as he had been FIRED, and I needed to bring back his dealer demo (early 00's Monte SS I believe). Talk about a quiet ride. He was actually pretty cool about it and was just on the phone with his contacts the whole time trying to line up some new employment, but so awkward for an 18-year old me!

In this case, the problem wasn't the dealership, but it revolved around a car purchase.  The Honda Oddity had crapped out its transmission for the second time so I was trading it in.  The woman had her heart set on the three pedal minivan - a brand-new 2013 Mazda 5 Sport.  It had been on the dealer lot for a looooong time and in that time had managed to acquire a bit of a ding on the passenger door.  The negotiations took place in the parking lot of the local horse track because they were having their annual "tent sale" event at the time and all the local dealers had brought over a significant portion of their inventory.  We are sitting there, doing the back-and-forth with the salesman making offers and counteroffers and all that when my dad drives up.  Now, my dad has been a small business owner in the retail space for most of his life which means that he was basically a salesman.  So you'd think he would understand how the process works, but maybe this is why I didn't grow up fabulously wealthy.  While we're sitting there with the salesman, telling him that we were really interested in the Kia Sedona from down the road but if the price was really right we'd make the compromise and buy the 5, Dad takes it upon himself to drive out there.  He saunters up to the table and with the salesman sitting right there says "I wanted to see that Mazda that you were all excited about.  Did you buy it yet?  Can I drive it?"  and then proceeds to tell the salesman the story about how my wife was just sold on the car the minute she saw it came with a clutch pedal.

We got a decent enough deal, but I still think we could have done a little better if we hadn't had all our cards on the table...

This is a story when I worked at a dealer:

In college, I was the lot manager at a VW dealership. They also served high-end customers as we had used Bentley's, Mercedes, Porsches, etc. on the lot. Lady brings in a Porsche Panamera for an oil change one weekend. Our quick lube tech (17 y.o. driving for a few months) gets the job cause it's simple enough. Pulling into the shop, he cuts it too tight and the rear door digs into the building. Whoops.

I think we put her into another Panamera or an S-class while we took hers to the body shop. 

I happened to be close to a (new car) dealership that had something I was mildly interested in, so I decided to stop in and have a look. It was a 4yr old car with 24k on it and based on the price I expected it to be a very clean 4 year old car, and I was OK with that. I arrive ask about it and sales manager and new sales chick come out to show it to me. It has scratches on every panel, some pretty deep. If the car wasn't clean they wouldn't have been as noticeable, but they are and I point them out. Sales manager says, sure it has a few scratches, but it's a 4 year old car. I point to the windshield and say, sure but look what you're asking. He gets angry and says it again, it's a 4 yr old car, what do you expect? I point to Mrs. f1y's car parked beside us and say, that thing's 6 yrs old and doesn't have any.

I decide, since I'm already there, to drive it anyway. Sales chick goes with me and I guess because of the tint he doesn't realize that my wife is sitting in her car, and  sales manager guy scrutinizes the car looking at every single panel, I assume looking for scratches. He doesn't find any so what does he do? He leaves and comes back with another guy and they spend 10 minutes going over every square inch of the car. Mr's f1y, not privy to the conversation outside,  just sat in the car and laughed. I told her she should have waited until he was done, then rolled the window down and asked him WTF he was doing.

I didn't buy the scratch car.

Suprf1y said:

He leaves and comes back with another guy and they spend 10 minutes going over every square inch of the car. Mr's f1y, not privy to the conversation outside,  just sat in the car and laughed. I told her she should have waited until he was done, then rolled the window down and asked him WTF he was doing.

 

They were probably starting a trade in appraisal on your car. I had them do that to me. Without ever saying I was going to trade in a car, the sales guy that had seen me drive up had started the process when they went to photocopy my ID and one of their guys looked over my car while we were doing a test drive. They had a very low figure ready to use as a bargaining chip- but I wasn't trading in a car. It was more funny than anything.

Salesman: Welcome, how can I help you?

Me: I'm heading to Parts

Him: Can I interest you in a car today?

Me: No, I'm heading to Parts

Him: What color do you like?

Me: Green

Him: I have an orange one.

Me: No thanks, I'm heading to Parts

Him: I feel like we got off on the wrong foot here, I just want to be your friend.

It could be worse, I could have been with my wife and he could have used the most overused and insincere word ever: "Folks." When they do that, I want to ask him what small midwest town he's from, where that might pass for normal.

The word "folks" offends you? I'm from NY and I use it every day. It's apparently more neutral than saying "you guys."

In reply to kb58 :

So what do you folks do for fun?  Sit around and hate stuff?