Proverbs 20, Verse 14
" 'Utterly worthless!' says the buyer as he haggles over the price.
But afterwards he brags about his bargain!"
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
When my mother wanted to modify my behavior, she was pretty transparent about it, as she is about most things. She would say, "Honey, I'm going to try a different tactic." And she did. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Either way, at least the two of us knew what was going on. It's best to have all your cards out on the table, I find, especially when you're dealing with family.
While most people probably won't agree with me on this one, I also think it's the best way to deal with car salesmen, too. Just walk in there and be as plain, bold-faced honest with them as you possibly can, and just watch them stare back at you blankly. Most people who are serious about buying a car have read all sorts of malarky and hornswaggle online and in car and consumer report magazines and in books about "tricks" you can employ at the dealership to get the "upper hand" and not "get ass-raped with a searing hot light sabre till you're bleeding out your eyeballs".
Forget all that cock: just go in there and tell them the absolute truth.
"I have no money."
"I have this thirteen-year-old car I want to dump on you and I know you're not going to sell it on your lot, you're just going to dump it on an auction warehouse twenty miles away and the "trade-in" value you're going to give me on my car is going to be absurdly inflated so I think I'm getting a great deal and then you can absolutely light sabre schlong me on financing for the remainder."
Telling the truth about the car you want to buy from them is also a great way to get a car salesman off balance. I sat inside a brand new Toyota Prius C a few months ago and the smell of the plastic was so noxious I almost gagged.
"It smells like a fish-market in here. Whatever happened to 'new car smell'? Does that cost extra," I asked, my face all scrunched up in a wince and a scowl. A wowl.
"I... I don't know why it smells like that," the salesman replied. "It does smell," he admitted, to his credit.
An '04 Honda Accord stunk like an ashtray I found, after I stuck my head inside the front window and gave it a sniff. There were cigarette burn marks on the seat, the center console and, oddly enough, on the headliner.
"Are you kidding? You don't actually think I'd put my two little children inside this car, do you?" I asked the salesman, who, coincidentally, had just lit up himself, "I mean-- who owned this car before? Rod Serling?"
Years ago, I took a moss-green Ford Focus stationwagon for a test drive. The salesman sat next to me, because that's what they do.
"So? Whaddya think?" he asked, "Doyalikeit?"
I turned to him with a quizzical look on my face.
"No," I said. "Do you?"
He was lost for words, Mickey.
"I mean-- what is there to like about this car? The cheap interior? The non-existent acceleration? The flimsy, plastic sun visors? Come on."
One might have, rightly, asked me why I was test-driving it if that's the way I felt about it. Well, truth be told, I like test-driving cars, and, when you have no money, the Ford Focus, of that vintage anyway, is what you can afford to pretend to not really like but nevertheless entertain because, let's face it; it is what it is and it's at least better than a PT Cruiser.
My favorite car-insult story came just a couple months ago, when I cooked up a psychotic plan to get rid of my voracious, gas loving Volvo wagon for a 2003 Toyota Corolla with 116,000 on the odometer. I took the Corolla for a test drive. It was hot as blazes out that day, and the Corolla was black, so I was feelin' the sun, and I was not feelin' the roll up windows. Oh, did I mention it had roll up windows?
To me, to cut my gasoline bill in half each month, I could deal with roll up windows but, when I turned on the air conditioning, it blew hot.
"Is this a joke?" I asked the salesman. He smiled, indicating, I guess, that it was. I then attempted to adjust the side mirror which, oddly enough, was a power mirror. It didn't move.
"Do you check these cars before you put them on the lot or are you just like, 'Eh, what the fuck?'" I asked him. He smiled again and said that they go through a "basic inspection" which, I guess, means that they make sure the car has four tires and a roof.
The car drove fine-- it is, after all, a Toyota.
When we got back to the dealership, I got out of the car, and the salesman asked me if I locked the driver's side door (manual locks). I looked at him.
"You worried somebody's going to steal that? Relax," I said, handing him the key. We went inside and waited for the "manager" to come over and put a final value on my car. He came over to the table, a smiling, short, round-bellied kid of maybe, maybe thirty. He told me my car was worth $4,000. The Corolla was listed at $6,000. Meaning, if my math is correct, that I would be giving away my luxurious, heated-seat, leather-swathed, wood-grained, all-wheel-drive funwagon for a econobox with roll-up windows, manual locks, no air conditioning and a broken side mirror, AND that I'd have to pay an additional $2,000 for the privilege.
"Are you serious?" I said to the manager, absolutely seething. He smiled at me. "Are you goddamned serious? How can you sit there with a straight face and tell me that you want me to hand you over $2,000 of my hard-earned money for that piece of shit-- that... that... Tijuana Taxi out there with roll-up windows and a stroke? Who in the hell do you think is going to walk in here, into this dealership in this affluent suburb and buy that miserable little car? Nobody. Nobody in their right mind would buy that for their kid, or their upstairs maid (quoting from "The Love Bug") or their grandmother-- that eyesore is just going to sit there collecting dust and taking up space on your lot."
"Well, sir, you may have a point there," conceded the manager, still smiling, "can I ask you something? What exactly do you like about that car?"
"The fuel mileage. Plain and simple. That is it. Nothing else, and I mean NO-THING else," I said.
The truth. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes, when you tell it, they smile at you. Sometimes it gets you a ride in a Tijuana Taxi. Sometimes it makes people angry, sometimes it gets you in trouble. But this is for goddamn sure: it'll probably never get you laid, it always feels good to speak, and it's the very last thing a car salesman expects to hear.
