Even though I don’t work the long hours in the biz as I used to (now it’s weekends only) these are, or should I say were, the reasons I used to love the car business…

• I loved working ‘bell to bell’
• I loved getting a $200 pay check for a 70 hour work week
• I loved ‘be backs’ who never come back
• I loved taking test drives with old people
• I loved taking test drives with teenagers
• I loved taking test drives with ‘wise guys’
• I loved taking test drives with ‘pipe smokers’
• I loved taking test drives…PERIOD!
• I loved the ‘desk man’
• I loved 15 minute lunches
• I loved ‘after the sale’ follow-up phone calls
• I loved hearing ‘who’s up’?
• I loved when a customer says ‘we just want to think about it’
• I loved hearing ‘I need to bring my wife back…’and most of all…
• I loved working on July 4th, XMAS, and New Years Day!
  

What do YOU love about the car business? Don’t be shy, let it rip, but please keep it clean…

General Motors has begun to tool up for a leaner and meaner GM. With the very real possibility of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in it’s immediate near future (read: Monday), they will be concentrating on high end, luxury compacts hoping that the American public will rush out to buy them instead of the big gas guzzlers of the past 70 or so years. It remains to be seen whether this strategy will save them from going belly up in the years to come.

With bankruptcy looming, a new GM begins to emerge

How it all began…

1981 was a very bad year .

I had just gotten divorced, was forced to sell my house, gotten dumped by the  ’other’  woman, quit my job, become homeless, totaled my car…and lost my self-respect…all in the space of 12 months.

Yes, 1981 was a very bad year.

During that year I also learned how to ride a motorcycle, out of necessity, because I had no car (it was totaled, remember) and all I could afford was a used rice burner.  And to top it off, I was renting a room in a house for twenty bucks a week.

As I said, 1981 was not a good year.

But then 1982 rolled around.

And one March day as I scanned the classifieds, I found a local Pontiac/Buick/Isuzu/GMC dealer looking for a car salesman. I had had very little experience in sales (although I had briefly been a Realtor) and decided to give it a shot. I set up the appointment and, on a brisk Monday morning, rode my motorcycle, striped tie flapping in the breeze, to the dealership for the interview.

And, as fate would have it, I was hired on the spot. Thus began my three decades long love/hate relationship with the retail end of the car business.