Back what seems like a hundred years ago and was really closer to 25 or so, I sold cars for a living. I took the job for a couple of reasons. I needed the money and there weren't a lot of jobs out there for which I had the skill-set. And, they offered to put me through a fairly lengthy training course. I felt that if the car bizz turned sour, I could use the training, especially in how to close a deal, in a lot of different jobs.
I would be working for a large, multi-line dealer in Berkeley. The training went fairly well and I sold a few cars. As I recall, I was in the middle of my class in sales when we graduated. I went, first, to our Nissan lot. We were working out of a trailer on the lot while the new facility was being built, adjacent to the service shop a block away. The "Big Plan" was to move all the brands under one roof, a converted steel factory and warehouse near the junction of the 13 and Interstate 80, for those of you who know Berkeley. But that was still a ways off.
I didn't do too badly selling cars and, when a position as assistant manager opened up at the firm's Dodge-Chrysler-Plymouth-Peugeot-Isuzu dealership down the street, I moved my stuff down there. I did pretty well as an assistant manager and learned more about the business from a couple of savvy guys. I could close another salesman's deal far better than I could my own, because the part of the business I hate was the whole shuck-and-jive of back-and-forth over the price of the car. When the time came to sit down and "do the numbers" I'd gotten to know my buyers and the decent and compassionate person who lives inside me had trouble with slamming them into a deal that would be good for us and maybe not so good for them. But with the clients of other salesmen? Piece of cake.
Jump ahead a few years. I wasn't selling cars anymore, but I still had the general business model and techniques pretty well in hand. The car I had bought from the dealer at cost when the demo program folded for lack of ready cash, had decided to give up the ghost. So, my lady and I went looking for a car. We needed a wagon or SUV and I was looking at something like a Ford Explorer. None of them could be had -- this was at the peak of their early popularity -- for the price we wanted to pay and the SF Credit Union would give us, so we kept looking. After checking out the Toyota Camry Wagon and deciding we might like one of those, we walked down the street to that dealer's Subaru showroom. I'd had a friend who had a Subaru and loved it. So, I found a wagon and we took a test drive. We weren't ready to commit, just yet, so we went home.
As it turned out, my lady got a terrible headache, so I went back on my own. I told the manager that I'd worked for one of the bigger dealerships in town and we cut to the chase. He had a wagon, loaded, in white that was sitting on his showroom floor and costing him money. He said, "Take the car, show it to your lady and come back and we can work the final numbers. But, I know I can get you this car, out the door for what you want to pay." So, I took the car home and talked to my lady. The color didn't thrill her, but we decided to drive back to the dealership, headache and all, and see if we could close the deal. Long story shorter -- we got the car for $1,500 below invoice and paid less out the door -- tax, tags, dealer prep and all -- that we'd been expecting. They were what is called a "motivated seller" since after a certain point, a car that doesn't sell costs the dealer more then they can make in profit. They don't buy the cars. They're what is called "floored" which means that some bank actually owns the car and charges the dealer a percentage each month to keep it on his lot.
That car, named Nanook ( an Inuit word for the master of white bears in the shamanic tradition) Nanook is sure-footed on ice, being AWD and is white. That suggested the name and when we found a polar bear fetish at Palms Trading in Albuquerque, the name was permanent. It's first trip, while still redolent of new car smell, was out to New Mexico and the whole Four Corners deal, a real shake-down and a two-week tourist holiday. That trip was, to a large extent, what made me willing to move to Albuquerque twenty-some years later.
When my lady and I split up, I kept Nanook since she didn't drive. It served me well and got us out here on the Great Move two years ago. But the winter of 2010 caused this polar bear a lot of grief. At 17, he didn't do all that well anymore and we knew it was only a matter of time. Our mechanic went over it and couldn't really find any single problem causing it to do poorly in the below-zero weather, but found a lot of things that were akin to the maladies of old age in a person. We found out that we were looking at around $7,000 to bring Nanook back to good health, $7,000 we didn't have. So, a search for a new -- or newer -- car ensued in a casual and leisurely way, mostly on the Internet.
While Nanook was laid up at the mechanic's during the winter, we rented a KIA Soul. We weren't looking for anything special, just a cheap economy car. Ana likes high cars and has been wanting one since her mini-van got totaled a few years back. The Soul is higher than the usual sedan or wagon, being what they call a CUV, or "cross-over utility vehicle." It drove well, Ana liked the seat height -- and so did I; no falling into a low seat and having to lever myself out again -- and it got good mileage. So the Soul was on the "definite" list for when we actually went looking for our next car.
Finally ready to actually look for a car, we went to the KIA dealer a couple of weeks ago and found a left-over 2010 that was close to our budget. Ana had talked to the credit union and had an idea what they'd finance. We couldn't make a deal. I asked the manager on duty to see the invoice, after telling him that I used to be in the business and that when I sold cars, the mark-up was something in the 14% ballpark and that had been the basis of my offer. He said, "Well, times have changed and KIA tries to keep their cars affordable, so there isn't a lot of mark-up." He was right; it was about 7%. We told the salesman we'd be in touch. He was a nice kid in his first week in the job -- so he said. Car salesmen are not, as a species, the most truthful people, which is another reason I got out of the industry.
We drove up the street to the Hyundai dealer. There were a couple of Hyundai's we were interested in, but they had none used and the new ones were a bit over our budget. The salesman, a 17-year vet of the business, told us he did have a KIA Soul on his lot and we went and looked at it. We both drove it at his insistence and it was nice, just as we remembered from the rental. It was a 2010 with a bit more than 25K on the clock. We sat down and did numbers. He gave us a price, I countered, low balling an out-the-door price. We looked a ways apart, but the salesman turned us over to his "finance guy" whose card called him a "business manager." I had told the salesman that I knew the business and I repeated it to the next in line.
After several hours of number crunching, the "business manager" got us down to a 100% loan deal, with a lot of extras thrown in, assured us he could get us "bought" by either our credit union or some one else and handed us the keys and a lot of paperwork. We were both a little reluctant, but the payments, even at 100%, were about what we'd talked about, as was the duration of the loan and even the interest. We both liked the car -- another white one, which was the only thing Ana didn't like about it -- and buoyed by the business managers absolute assurance that he could get the deal done, we drove home in what we hoped was our newer car.
Time passed and we heard nothing from the dealership. And then, a week after we drove away, the bomb dropped. We could have the car with all the extras -- extras on which the dealership makes money, sometimes more than the profit on the actual car, something I knew, but chose not to think too much about -- but we needed to come up with $7,000 down. Ana was outraged and majorly disappointed. I was just angry. We'd both allowed ourselves to be manipulated into doing something we shouldn't have done. And we both knew better.
We told the money guy to back all the "Extras" out of the deal and re-figure the numbers. He did and we still needed $3,500 down to make it work. That is exactly what the credit union had told us before we got pie-in-the-skyed by the "business manager." We found a way to come up with the down and still make the thing work. I gave them a number, out-the-door, which they came close to. We signed another set of papers and gave them a check for the down and Murcielaguita Negra con Alma Blanca was ours. And the credit union's, of course.
My family has always named cars and other motorized devices, like lawn mowers. My aunt had a grey Plymouth Cranbrook called "Pigeon." Her lawnmower was called "Victor" for some reason that has gotten lost in the mists of time. My dark-blue '49 Mercury, very similar to the one in the James Dean movie Rebel Without Cause became known as "Rebel." So, when Ana put a small black bat fetish in the car, I looked up the proper Spanish for a little black bat with a white soul. After Googling translations, I found a Spanish translation forum and got the colloquial form: Murcielaguita Negra con Alma Blanca. I tend to call her Blanca but Ana has called her Murcie since the bat went on the dashboard. She's a "she" because Murcie is sort of a female-sounding name.
And we've both learned a lesson or two. The first is not to take the car on the promises of the dealer's people. The second is not to buy from that dealership again. Not that any of the others are better. But these guys only get one bite at this apple.
Murcielaguita Negra con Alma Blanca
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