DRIVE

one more on odd car sale practices… there’s a dealership in my region, let’s call them “crazy bob’s.” there’s a crazy bob’s ford; a crazy bob’s chrysler/dodge; a crazy bob’s hyundai; even a crazy bob’s MINI. so browsing the used car websites, i found a pretty good deal on a car. let’s say it was a 2009 ford pinto with 20,000 miles. looks new. let’s say the sale price on that pinto was $10,000 and an identical new one goes for $18,000.

where would it make sense to sell that car in crazy bob’s family of dealerships? ford, right? so a guy comes in looking for a 2010 pinto; checks out the new one (which the dealer is making a pretty low profit on, since the invoice is like $16k and in this market any holdback benefit has been exhausted). dealer can say “well, take a look at this used pinto (which we bought at auction for $5k and get to keep all the profit on); it doesn’t have the extra 5 horsepower of the model you were looking at, and you won’t get the same warranty on it, but it probably meets your needs (and you’ll probably still come back to us for all of your out-of-warranty repairs, which is where we make most of our income).”

nope, crazy bob in his infinite wisdom has decided to sell the pinto at the hyunai dealership. instead the dealer has to either find a way to get the guy financing, sell him a new ford escort which he doesn’t really want, or show him an ’02 honda CRX they’ve got sitting in the back. best case, he likes the Honda and takes it away, only to bring it to Honda dealers for service and eventual trade.

side note: according to will smth of the new orleans sants, most professional football players own at least one auto dealership. interesting, huh?

on a sort-of related note, i’m honestly amazed nobody’s making kitcars for the Prius. half of the entertainment jerks in Los Angeles traded in their luxury sedans for that crayon tip of a car, and not one of them decided it could use some real style? lame.