The Garage Blog

The Garage: Your daily dose of automotive news, reviews and motorsports coverage

The dealer viewpoint

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As my friends know I have been in the retail car business since 1984. I have been fortunate enough to be able to make a living at it and the car business has been my career, allowing me to play in my hobby so to speak.

So after 33 years of doing this and doing jobs from salesman, service advisor, parts sales even cleaning cars I thought I would talk about some of the experiences and falsehoods that we still run into today.

My first topic will be new car pricing, or further explaining what dealerships pay for vehicles and the “great deals” one dealer seems to be able to do vs another.

First and foremost we are a franchise, no different than a McDonald’s or Pet Value. What this means is that we all pay the same price to the manufacturer for vehicles, parts etc. If you don’t believe that look at it this way. If you owned a McDonald’s in one part of a town and I owned the other a few miles away, what would you do if you found out that McDonald’s was selling you their burgers for a lower price? You would sue their asses off, that’s what you would do. The car industry is the same, we all pay the same price for the same car.

If any of you find this interesting I will keep posting things about buying cars etc.

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Before you blame your car…

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In today’s busy world, most of us are surrounded by a plethora of electric or electronic devices. Phones, pda’s, laptops and even mobile coolers are often needed to get us through the day. Without them, our productivity (or our lunch) goes to hell in a lunch basket. Of course, when the batteries begin to drain we all scurry to the closest power source. Often that is the 12 volt socket of the car. Didn’t we used to call that a lighter socket? When our stuff won’t charge, we get seriously inconvenienced not to mention more than a little miffed. What do most people do? They run to their car dealership and bitch that their power source doesn’t work.

I have a short personal tale on this topic: My phone charger works in my 2000 Nissan Xterra. It does not work in Mrs. G’s 2002 Mazda. It has not worked in a single media fleet vehicle over the past 2 years, including Nissan products. In other words, my charger is a poorly engineered piece of garbage. There has been nothing wrong with the 30 or so vehicles I’ve tried it in.

Having worked in the repair end of the auto industry since the dawn of cell phone chargers, you would not believe how many times I have tried to convince a consumer that the reason their phone won’t charge has nothing to do with their 40 thousand dollar car and everything to do with their twenty dollar phone charger. People just can’t seem to grasp the concept that their cheap ass, Made in China, phone charger might not have been engineered to work with their specific vehicle. The answer is always the same: “it works in my other car…”

The problem folks is that there are no standards for 12 volt socket insertion devices. Nor I suspect are there set standards for automotive 12 volt sockets. Everyone tries to mimic roughly the same size, but they are all just a tiny bit different. If your car’s 12 volt socket has power & ground, then it works. Case closed. Your phone still won’t charge? Try another brand of charger! Please, don’t freak out on your service department because they say there is nothing wrong with your car.

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Psycho mechanic snaps and kills lot guy

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Most guys who have worked in the trade for a while have a few stories about unstable mechanics. These are often the guys who throw tools or keep weapons in their box “just in case”. This story takes the cake though:

John Hall was a car porter at Chevyland in Shreveport Louisiana. He was walking through the shop and apparently tapped a technician on the shoulder. The technician, Carlton Church apparently turned and popped Hall in the face. Hall then fell backwards and hit his head on the shop floor. That was on February 24. Hall died of his head injury on March 3.

What I don’t understand about this story is that the police were not informed of the situation until March 1. Maybe it is acceptable for a good ole boy to punch out a co-worker in the south. Here in Ontario, the police would have arrived with the ambulance and the guy would have been charged with assault right off. Those charges would have been upgraded to manslaughter once the poor man passed away. How the hell could it possibly have taken so long to report this? Why isn’t it automatically reported like it would be here?

Source KSLA News

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A note to consumers: Remember, your service staff are people too

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As regular readers know, while I work in the retail side of the auto industry, I rarely allow my day job to spill over into my writing. To ensure that I remain professional at both ends, I stay away from dealership topics close to home. An interesting trend is developing though that merits comment. Consumers seem to have lost control of their emotions and are taking it out on dealership staff at an alarming rate.

Since Christmas, the dealership I work at has had at least one irate customer a day. In some stores, with some brands, this is not abnormal. In my current store though, I can honestly say we might have had 2 truly upset customers in the 12 months leading up to Santa’s arrival. Since the fat man in the red suit has left though, it’s like the fabric that holds these people together has come unglued. Two customers have truly fallen into the certifiable category, both of which very nearly required the involvement of the boys in blue.

So, like any proactive manager, I have attempted to assess what has changed. The same cars. The same staff. We have changed nothing in our methods of dealing with people. So why are our customers becoming so unmanageable?
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Times are tough and the criminals get tougher

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They’ve called our fair city Toronto The Good for years, because we have so little crime compared to most other cities of it’s size. As economic times get tougher for the legit community, so too does it get tougher for the scumbags.

On Monday, a guy walked into an Acura dealership in Toronto and asked to test drive a TL without Navi. They didn’t have one on the lot. A short time later, the same guy visited Acura Sherway, and made the same request. They had exactly the car he wanted to see in their inventory. The salesman went out on the drive with the customer. At some point during the drive, the customer pulled out a handgun and put it to the salesman’s temple. The guy told the salesman to get out of the car and then took off with the TL.

While scenes like this may be commonplace in some of the larger cities south of the border, we aren’t accustomed to it here in Toronto. Perhaps that’s why the scumbags are brazen enough to do it, because we aren’t expecting it.

Times are tough indeed.

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Not so crazy man loses his mind at Ontario VW dealership

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Over the years, I’ve heard of some pretty odd freak outs at dealerships but this one takes the cake.

On Monday evening, just before midnight, the night cleaners at Roseland Volkswagen in Burlington go a big surprise when a man driving a 2007 Mazda pick up truck slammed into 3 new cars parked outside the front door. Then, the driver backed up and came in again, this time he clobbered the cars on the opposite side of the door. Once again, he backed up and took a run at the front door of the dealership.

What happened next gets even weirder:

The 37 year old man, failing to bust through the front door, got out of his truck and took a leak on the surrounding automotive carnage. He went back to his truck, removed a bottle of champagne and climbed up on the roof of the Mazda. He took a drink of the bubbly, dropped his pants and proceeded to give his soldier boy a crank!

Somewhere along the way, a tow truck driver approach and the tosser began tossing objects at him.

Unbelievably, when tested he had a zero blood alcohol level. Suspecting what any sane police would, the nut job was taken to a local metal facility for assessment where it was determined that all of the guy’s marbles were still in attendance! He was cooperative with police, yet he offered no explanation as to why he chose to destroy a dealership which he had never even had dealings with. He has been charged with mischief over $5000 and released on bail.

I think police should be looking for a second opinion from another shrink, as this dude is obviously cracked!

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A Rabid Salesman

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Some unscrupulous people will go to any means to own a ”classic” car.

A customer changed her mind about buying a new car. The sales manager said her trade-in was already sold. The case ended up in front of a jury.

Cleveland’s Fox News affiliate reports that a jury convicted the former sales manager at a local Chrysler dealership on theft charges after he refused to return a customer’s trade-in after she backed out of a deal.
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And which comfort option would you prefer Mr. Smith?

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I spent my day in a session with a large assortment of retail auto industry types today. I had the pleasure of sitting with an attractive young lady who has a reputation for being a fearsome service sales person. She thought that the above options should be added to the bottom of a standard repair order.

This could be fitting for just about any sales industry!

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Buying a car: A New, Simple Approach. Why not enjoy it?

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This is a “how to” with a unique approach to getting exactly the deal and car you want, to not only avoid all the things we have grown to hate about visiting a car dealership, AND actually enjoy the process. What a concept!

As car buyers, here is just some of the negative junk that we have all experienced:

Rude and indifferent treatment by salesmen that are dressed like pimps (don’t you ever wonder what their house or car looks like?), being ripped off on trade-ins and new purchase, the tons of wasted time it takes to transact a deal, the agony of being handed off to a “closer”, and if you are a woman just coming onto the dealership premises by yourself, being asked, “is your husband with you?” as if you don’t have a brain in your head.
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Adventures in Innovation – Tom Procter

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The voice was muffled, but the words were audible and ringing with authority: “Back out of there slowly and keep your hands in sight.” At the moment of that command, I was headfirst down the driver’s side well, with a flashlight in my mouth, my hands desperately trying to re-join the linkage of the accelerator pedal to the carburetor rod, and my legs sticking out above the driver’s seat. From the viewpoint of a passing California Highway Patrolman, the image of a bright red convertible parked by the side of the highway with a pair of legs waving like semaphore flags, may possibly have created at least a degree of suspicion.

It was 10:00 on a moonlit summer night, and I was on my way back from San Luis Obisbo to my home in Santa Barbara. The top was off on my custom built ’28 Bugatti Type 55, and the throaty exhaust of the modified Porsche engine in third gear was like a massage to my soul as we cruised under the bright light of a full moon through the pass on Highway 154 alongside the lake and stream, and eventually over the incredible historic bridge just south of Lake Cachuma. Just as I roared across the bridge, I felt a pop under my foot and the Bugatti instantly decelerated. I braked to a stop in a wide spot off the road and turned off the motor. With the help of a flashlight, I could see that the accelerator pedal had pulled loose, and since there were no doors on this coupe, I had to dive headfirst to the bottom of the well to repair the damage.
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