My life & used car salespeople - a three week odyssey

I've spent an inordinate amount of time in the past 3 - 4 weeks doing car stuff. Insurance, rental, shopping, test driving, researching, haggling, loan applications, at the mechanic, getting a ride to the mechanic, driving on rural highways, driving (or rather waiting) in State Fair traffic, loading the car, unloading the car, and finally buying a freakin' car. For someone who lives exactly 1.2 miles from work and prefers to spend the sunny cool days of early and mid fall on foot or bike, this has been a lot of car time, and while it hasn't been entirely unpleasant, it has been exhausting and unusual.

I have learned a great deal during the course of this odyssey, not only about cars, but about the human psyche at its most raw and gendered. On and off the used car lots, everything lately seems to me to be about the tension between genuine human connection and salesmanship, between strong protective maleness and aggressive sleazy maleness, and between true valuable beauty and showy hollow beauty. It's following me into bars, to work functions, even to my volunteer gig as a writing tutor. Suddenly, everyone's a salesman! Pretty weird, and definitely not all bad.

So, when it comes to a young woman buying a car, the men in her midst seem to fall into several categories:

The first, perhaps obviously, is the Dad-guys. Dad-guys are protective and trustworthy. Whether or not they are actually experts in car stuff, they have more expertise than I do, and they let me know that, as respectfully as they can. :) Now, the Dad-guys in my car buying odyssey included my own actual Dad, as well as another SuperDad I brought with me car shopping one day for back up, and the salesman I ultimately bought the car from. Dad-guys one and two were of course very genuine and pretty helpful (and I thank them!!), while Dad-guy three said slippery things to me like, "Now, you know I have a daughter, and I wouldn't let you leave here with that car if I thought you were getting ripped off. I really think you're getting a very good price." Notice how suddenly this is not a two-way interaction between him, the salesman, and me, the buyer....he's made it into a three way interaction between him, the trustworthy Dad-guy who has my best interest at heart, me, the smart daughter, and some mysterious car selling third party that he is protecting me from? Interesting sales ploy, eh?! Hah! It's smart though, and I bet it works. My Dad probably doesn't know more about cars than the average industrious gent, but he is inextricably bound up with cars in many of my childhood memories. My Dad has been on more road trips with me to more places than any other living creature on the face of the planet, by a factor of five at least. We've been to FL and back several times, cross country to CA twice, and to and from half the state parks, campgrounds and concert venues in the Northeastern United States. (Not to mention our road trips in China, though technically neither of us was driving, so I'm not sure if that counts...) I remember very well driving with my Dad from FL to NY when I was about 4 years old in the new yellow 1984 Volvo station wagon he drove for the next 20 years. He had a CB radio that he hooked up, and we talked to truck drivers and to the receptionist at the motel we were headed for. "Breaker breaker, this is Mr. Yellow, do you copy?" I've been on the phone with my Dad during every major and semi-major car situation I've ever encountered - break downs, repairs, stranded-on-the-highway situations. My Dad even taught me to drive. Of course, I didn't pass the first road test I took, but he's still the primary car guy in my life, and so Mr. Salesguy picked the right sociocultural associations to make. Slick!

Then, the second type of man in my car-buying life: the Cousin-guy, which I have dubbed Cousin-guy because this class of gents reminded me of my cousin Josh, who helped me when I was buying Pablo. They're much younger than the Dad-guys, but older than me and far more knowledgeable than I am about cars. They're very helpful to have around and mean well, but they can take the whole thing a little too seriously and are prone to getting a little pissed at me if I don't follow their advice to the letter. Veddy interesting.

The third group is the Uncle-guys, whom I have dubbed Uncle-guys because they remind me of my Uncle Nick of Hyannis Foreign Auto - Cape Cod, MA. My mechanic in Raleigh, Harry, is DEFINITELY an Uncle-guy, and not just because he's from Boston and sounds like the Car Talk guys. ;) Uncle guys are brief and to the point, extremely helpful in just the ways you need them to be, they watch out for you, but they never ever imply that you're an idiot. Esotic was mostly an Uncle-guy during the Rhonda mission, too.

The last type is the Desperate-type, characterized by flipping between one of the above types and something much less subtle. The phrases "We can work something out for you on this number," and then "What will it take?!?!" are characteristic. If you don't run screaming, you can actually get a very good deal out of these guys by telling them exactly what it will take. In the case of the guys who sold me Rhonda, I actually used a little desperation-stoking strategy I will from now on call the "talking to Mom" strategy - this particular salesman was helpless against it. It involved sitting in his office with his door closed on the phone with my mother for about 30 minutes. She checked the car price on Blue Book for me, which was helpful, but mostly it made him very nervous, made him think I was about to leave without the car. When I came out, he was ready to take just about any price I offered. Sweet!

Anyway, it was a highly interesting journey through paperwork and maleness, with lots of interesting sociocultural stuff to ponder under the surface of it. Thanks for reading folks - I'll post pictures of Rhonda soon!