When you go to a dealership to buy a car, you expect the salesperson to be an expert in the vehicle you want to buy. Want to tow a 6,000-pound trailer while carrying your whole family? The sales staff should be able to tell you if the SUV you’re looking at can handle it. But not all salespeople were created equal. What’s the most ridiculous thing a car salesman told you?
For me, this answer is pretty easy. My parents have finally decided to replace the 2011 Chevrolet Suburban 1500 that they use to tow a 6,292-pound, 35-foot travel trailer. On the surface, this seemed fine. The 4×4 SUV could tow 8,000 pounds and had a payload of 1,564 pounds. The camper hitched up to the rear was a 2007 Thor Adirondack 31BH, a 35-foot trailer that weighs 6,292 pounds empty and 7,600 pounds loaded. On paper, that sounds great, right?
In practice, it’s different. The Suburban does an ok job when it’s just my parents and myself. The Vortec 5.3-liter Vortec FlexFuel V8 (320 HP/335 lb-ft torque) gets the job done, but you have to wring it out to get to and then maintain the speed limit. There isn’t much power in reserve for passing, hills, or more weight.
This is demonstrated well when my brother piles his four kids plus him, his girlfriend, and a bunch of gear into the Suburban. The engine may have been near its limit before, but it practically wheezed under the higher loads brought on by a camping trip with my brother’s family. The Suburban also handled much worse with the trailer on the back. The trailer suddenly felt like a boat anchor trying to drag down the Suburban with it.
The problem was clear to me. Everyone was paying attention to just the trailer’s unloaded weight, never payload or anything else. The 2007 Thor Adirondack has an unloaded hitch weight of 736 pounds. Now, trailer manufacturers don’t just publish that weight for nerds like me. Tongue weight subtracts from your tow vehicle’s payload. You don’t need a physics degree to understand this. Something has to carry that 736 pounds, and it’s the tow vehicle. At the same time, the tow vehicle can carry only so much weight. The 2011 Chevrolet Suburban 1500 4×4 has a payload of 1,564 pounds. Take that 736 pounds away and guess what? Now you’re left with 828 pounds to play with. My brother’s family eats up that whole number before they add a pound of luggage and toys.
Unfortunately, my parents somehow managed to buy a worse vehicle for the job. They just brought home a 2015 GMC Yukon XL Denali 4×4. The EcoTec3 6.2-liter V8 under the hood makes 420 HP and 460 lb-ft of torque at roughly similar RPM ranges as the old Suburban’s engine. That’s good. What was bad was the 7,900-pound towing capacity and the 1,492-pound payload. So, now my brother’s family will begin to overload the SUV before they even finish piling in.
So, what gives? How did my parents mess up? I had a discussion with the salesman and he used some really fuzzy math. See, he said payload no longer matters when you hitch up to the trailer. He told me the numbers that mattered were towing capacity and GCWR, which he said were 8,100 pounds and 14,000 pounds, respectively. Since my family’s trailer weighed just 6,292 pounds of the 8,100-pound tow rating, that’s 1,708 pounds they could use for other stuff. Add in what he said was the SUV’s 1,500-pound payload rating, and you have 3,208 pounds that you can put in the SUV. He then told me that my brother’s family can’t weigh 3,208 pounds.
Problem is, that’s 1,708 pounds of free towing capacity. That’s weight for the trailer, not the interior of the tow vehicle. Your payload doesn’t double because you’re towing a lighter trailer.
Sadly, I somehow encountered even worse advice. Another salesman at another dealership tried to sell my parents a Chevy Equinox, saying one of those can tow 7,000 pounds. An Equinox really tows around 1,500 pounds.
Maybe, I haven’t encountered the worst advice out there. Has a salesperson told you something even more ridiculous?
Top graphic sales guy: adobe.stock.com/pathdoc
I was at a Chrysler dealership – I had just struck what I felt was a pretty good deal on a gently used Town & Country. (Awesome minivan with Sto-n-Go seating. Talk about a magical bit of engineering. It would have been the perfect car if it didn’t have so many electrical problems.) It was already pretty late and I had prepared myself for that awful post-deal gauntlet.
Want the blah-blah protection?
No.
Scotch guard the seats?
No.
Blah-blah coating?
No.
This goes on for a very, very long time while I patiently declined everything and signed all the forms to indicate I was declining all of these wonderful services.
Finally, we get to the end. The dealership is basically closed. The place is f**king empty. He hands me the final paperwork, then he grabs a whistle out of his desk drawer, blows it, then rings a bell hanging off the side of his office wall, and in the most robotic, “I guess I have to do this” kind of delivery, says “You can’t say we don’t give you the bells and whistles!”
I just stared at him, dumbfounded. We were the only people in the whole building. It wasn’t like other customers were going to see this and clap for me. He just spent hours trying to sell me extra stuff. We were done. He just had to drop his catch phrase.
Holy crap that’s simultaneously hokey, stupid, and sad on his part.
Probably had to because the manager/owner was still there and didn’t want to deal with nonsense from them about not doing it.
Reminds me of the last car I bought, they used to post pictures of sales with the new car on the website or Facebook or something. So they of course ask me to set up for my picture like it is a forgone conclusion.
No, don’t need a photo.
Really? – The guy looked like I was making his life harder.
Yeah really, I don’t want my picture taken.
He didn’t try for much longer, but I’d bet he got an earful from the sales manager for not getting a photo for the website. Sorry, I don’t want to be posted on a car dealer website.
This isn’t surprising at all. I sold cars for a bit. The older guys I worked with knew very little about the product. So when going over a car in the show room, I’d hear them just throw nonsense out there. It wasn’t even stuff like where you’d try to over-hype the car, it was just not one care about being accurate.
Any time I’ve shopped cars as an adult, I’ve had zero use for the salesman to provide me with information, so I barely listen to them until it is time to actually buy.
That’s all Honda’s had a loud power steering pump whine and not just the 08′ accord that has smelled like it had sat in the Chesapeake for 3 days
But fresh water lubricates!
Wait… There’s a dealership that is called “That’s all Honda’s” in my area?? Does it include Old Bay air fresheners???
Not me, but my best friend’s story. It’s 2019, she’s getting married, and she decides it’s time to trade in her high-mileage (200k) but well-maintained ‘08 Liberty. Aside for the AC not working, everything else is functional and the interior is in pretty good shape. Literally the day she goes to take the car in for appraisal, the alternator dies. No big deal, I offer to fix it for free since Liberty alternators are easy to swap. She is thankful but declines since I didn’t have an alternator on hand and had already taken off work to trade the Jeep in. I believe KBB was about 5000. The dealer offered her 800, claiming that the alternator repair was a $1200 job with a whole bunch of labor involved. She walked out of there and texted to ask me if I wanted to buy her Jeep for 950. I tried to pay her more, but she refused.
Oh, and the alternator repair cost me $120 and took about a half hour. I still have the Liberty and my dad uses it for his farm vehicle. It’s not a great vehicle, but it was cheap, 4×4, and has enough storage for tools, fence supplies, etc.
I went with a friend to a Honda dealer in Fall 2018 so that she could test-drive a current-gen Fit to replace her aging 2007 Fit. I was there to absorb and deflect salesman bullshit, and our demands were pretty simple; we wanted a 3rd-gen Fit of some kind so she could get a feel for if she liked the interior, infotainment, and other similar systems. She really wanted a manual transmission, so if she enjoyed the car otherwise she was ready to place an order for a 2019 model configured exactly how she wanted it.
The best that the dealer could do was get us a test drive on a 2015 (2019s were scarce at the time due to production/supply issues) with a CVT, and the salesman tried chatting us up during the test drive. Both she and I drove the car, and she was fine with the interior changes and leaning toward placing her order. The salesdude was clearly clueless, saying things like “With the CVT, you can just ZOOM away!!” while we both loathed how much of a slug it made the car. I can’t even remember the other bullshit he said about the car, but nearly everything he said was wrong and I took delight in gently correcting him on each “fact.”
We get back to the dealer, and he says “So what can I do to get you to go home in this car today?” I replied, “NOTHING, because this is not what my friend wants. I do not want this car either, and am not looking to buy for at least another year. We have another test drive (for a manual Yaris) in thirty seconds at the dealer next door, goodbye.” And we walked away.
Oh, I forgot a ridiculous experience. I thought I wanted a Soul (the Kia–I don’t have any need for the other kind). I went to a dealership and drove a Soul !, but I told the guy I wanted the +. He found one was getting unloaded and parked it next to the !. He asked their pricing guy to figure out the price. He gave me the ! price. I gently told him that he had given me the same price as the loaded model, and I didn’t want all those features. The sales guy I had worked with said the same. He said “Well, if you want an alien green Soul, that’s the price.” I got really annoyed and said I didn’t give a shit about the green, I wanted the right price for a +, and I walked. Didn’t end up with a Soul (of either variety).
My mom was looking at an Isuzu Rodeo Sport when I was a young teenager I think. The saleswoman was trying to sell her on various features one of which was having individual coil packs. My mom asked what the advantage of that was. The saleswoman replied with “it helps the oil flow better through the engine.” My mom then got mad at me when I immediately told her she was wrong.
To anyone in sales its okay to not know and get back to someone with a good answer after finding out. Its how you learn and also build trust.
My approach is to believe literally nothing the salesperson tells you and get facts instead. I don’t quite remember when I first figured out that they will say anything they think will get you to buy a car, but it was early on. Every buyer is an opportunity for exploitation. It may not be true 100% of the time, but it has been every time I’ve talked to a salesperson.
The only thing surprising about Mercedes’ story is the rank idiocy pf the salesman saying that slapping on a 50 pounds trailer would add roughly 8,150 lbs of gross vehicle capacity. Because that what he was saying. Wow!
I was talking to two different dealerships about options for getting a specific Alfa Romeo Giulia. Both of these dealers were out of town as the local ones didn’t want to work with me, one in Kansas City and the other in Chicago. I discussed options with both of them about finding one, modifying an existing one on the lot, or ordering one from the factory to get the exact spec I wanted, or at least close enough. All the while the KC dealer was attempting to build a relationship with me while the Chicago dealer was more down to business. With both dealerships we landed on a factory order, so now I was quietly pitting them against each other on price. They both came out with the same price in the end, however, the Kansas City dealer took some negotiation and required a deposit whereas the Chicago dealer came out with their best price right away and didn’t bother with a deposit even after I asked if they wanted one. “It’s a good build! If you don’t come pick it up we’ll just put it on the lot and sell it, no need for a deposit.” With a baby on the way and several months before the car would arrive, I didn’t want to bother with a deposit. so with everything else equal I went with the Chicago dealer
I went back to the KC dealer to say that I had been talking to another dealer as well and they were not requiring a deposit. Instead of trying to match or exceed the Chicago dealer’s offer, the KC dealer decided to DOUBLE DOWN and literally said he deserved the sale, deposit included, because we had spent time building our relationship (which consisted of several pleasant phone calls and nothing more). I don’t live in Kansas City. I never intend to live in Kansas City. Once I leave your store, I will never see you again. I don’t care about your fake relationship. That is in no way worth me giving you a deposit when I don’t have to for the exact same car at the exact same price somewhere else.
So, shoutout to Joe Rizza in Orland Park, IL, who ordered me the car I wanted with their best price up front, the most competitive one at that, and no whining when I came with cash instead of financing. I almost stayed after the sale to watch the White Sox game with the guy on the showroom TV.
The other part of the story is that I told one of my local dealers I wanted a green one but they kept trying to push me on a blue dealer demo with 5,000 miles on the clock at full MSRP! They even tried to get me to sign on that price (again, zero discounts) when I made it clear from the start I did not want that car and even if I did, I would not be paying full price for a demo.
The salesperson disappeared for awhile for some reason. I feel like she might have been trying to do that thing where salespeople leave the phone off the hook and listen in from another office to see if my wife and I would talk about the sale. I was already keen to that trick and my wife and I bantered back and forth about how ugly the salesperson’s coat was instead.
“So long as you get 80% of what you want in a used car, you’re doing OK” salesman trying to sell my wife a manual Imprezza when she specifically said she wanted an automatic, she liked it cos it was black, so he kept pushing it on her. If he had any sense she probably would have bought an automatic in a different colour, but he thought she cared more about the colour. We already had a manual car at the time, she wanted an auto, she commuted into the city, I didn’t, so an auto was a non negotiable.
Of course, because women couldn’t possibly care about anything other than the color!
Blehhh
My parents wanted to buy a right hand drive Subaru Legacy to export to the U.K. when they moved from the US – they’d just brought them out for rural postal service workers. First dealer told them no way – it’s illegal to drive a right-hand drive car in Missouri. What about those USPS Jeeps? No, it’s illegal for civilians to drive a right-hand drive car in Missouri (like the USPS is a covert branch of the military?). The next dealer (Webster Groves Subaru, no idea if they still exist) had never heard of the car, but took it on themselves to find out all about it and how to get it ordered. Parents saved about $6k even after shipping costs vs buying one in Britain.
Wait…your parents were able to order a RHD Subaru to a dealership in Missouri? And their purpose was to ship it overseas to avoid VAT?? That’s a solid article here!! Outside the weird lies by the dealership, you are burying the coolest lede here! You should message one of the editors or tips@ accounts!!
Sadly not that exciting – goods aren’t dutiable on import if you’ve used them for six months as a non-U.K. resident prior to moving to the U.K. Subaru Indiana produced 1st and 2nd gen Legacys in RHD for US postal workers – choice of metallic blue or white, one spec (L AWD estate) only. So it was a US market car imported to the U.K., had to have headlights adjusted, and euro-spec rear lights with amber indicators and rear fogs fitted to be registered. There were so many returning Brits importing them that the main British tow bar manufacturer had enough demand to create a productionised item specifically for this car (bumper reinforcements are different).
This is the kind of trivia that I thrive on. Thank you for making it worthwhile to get out of bed this morning (I’m not being sarcastic).
Don’t t encourage me – I had a U.K. spec Legacy Turbo at the time so I’ll happily bore you with the minutiae of U.K. vs US spec differences from cup holders to parking light switches.
In Germany you had to remove the side marker lights from US cars. Did they have to add a rear fog light or is that just for Europe?
I’d love to compare the interiors of JDM and USDM, right-hand drive cars for such details.
Parking light switches? Do tell.
That Subaru dealer moved two suburbs west, so now it’s Sunset Hills Subaru, on a street with a better traffic count. But, not in a clot of dealers.
They loved selling underdogs, quirky cars: As a middle-schooler I sat in a Citroen SM in their showroom. Fiats, Peugeots also.
Hope it’s still owned by folk with the mindset you paint. Any metro STL autopians had dealings with them, since the move?
I think the intro came from Scottish friends with a Peugeot 405 (with mouse belts) bought from there.
Back in 2010 my wife wanted an SUV. She had her heart set on a Honda CR-V (which is what we ultimately bought) but I convinced her to cross-shop just to be sure. So, we looked at a number of other brands.
One of the ones considered was a Hyundai Santa Fe. We pulled into the lot of the south St. Louis County Hyundai dealer and a salesman greeted us as we were getting out of the car. He asked why we were here, so we told him we wanted to drive a Santa Fe. However before we could get into one, he insisted on bringing us into his cubicle and sitting us down to extoll the virtues of Hyundai as a brand.
He started off his ~5 min soliloquy by stating in a just-outside-the-STL-area mild drawl: “HUN-day. Korean car company. You know, the Koreans call the Japs ‘the lazy Asians.'”
Mild amusement combined with slight mortification aside, we stuck around and still drove the car, which was… fine. Then we brushed off the racism and moved on.
I gave you a thumbs up for your screen name. Indeed it is!
The sexism from dealers is what gets me. Why risk pissing off ANYONE who is considering a car from your dealership?
Before we were married, there was the guy who wouldn’t talk to her, but was more than happy to chat up her friend, who was a guy. He said something like “sure it’s your car, but we all know how that turns out.” To HIM. To his credit, her friend ripped the guy a new one before they walked out.
Of course there was also the ooze that said he was the “best salesperson” at the dealership (red flag #1). The car didn’t have tilt steering because “performance cars don’t have that” (red flag #2). I calmly informed him that my 540I6 had it, and moved on.
Then buddy tried to sell us the trim with the 2.0 NA engine when we had driven the 2.4 (red flag #3). Then the sales manager made a last-ditch effort with the “what’ll it take to get you into that car today” routine when I could tell from my wife’s expression that the sales guys would have to kill each other for our sport to even have a chance.
When my wife bought her Sienna back in 2013, they suggested I would need to cosign on the loan. “Really?” she said, “I didn’t have to get a co-signer for my Sentra, and I earn way more than I did back then.”
He asked her annual salary. She told him.
No co-signer was required.
In my short time selling cars, I sold a few to single women just because they said I didn’t make them feel like shit during the process. I was a young guy, just treated them like a human being I guess.
That’s the thing. And if sales people were to treat everyone well, the whole industry would have less of a horrible reputation.
Not sure where it was from, but some stat said that women drove car purchase decisions more than men. It’s foolish to cut off a significant part of the market, and it also just sucks.
I kind of hope some salesperson tries that on her next time. I’ll just pull up a chair and watch the fireworks.
That my warranty claim wasn’t valid because I didn’t by the diesel jetta with 16 inch rims, or upgrade to the 18inch rims… I honestly didn’t have much to come back to on that. But between that and another issue, never buying another VW product again unless its got 911 written on it.
I had a coworker who made the mistake of buying a car from Big Red Kia in OKC. They told her all sorts of nonsense about the Rio she bought, from it being RWD, turbocharged, and some other nonsense I can’t remember now. I pointed out all the lies to her, only to find out she got next to nothing on her trade-in. It was disappointing to hear, to say the least, though given their obnoxious radio ads, it also wasn’t surprising.
Buying a used late model car for my daughter from an out-of-state dealer, negotiating over the phone…while I was on vacation.
They wanted us to finance thru his department, but wouldn’t talk sale price. The monthly payments he was quoting were *hundreds* of dollars higher than the ‘estimated price’ we had from various loan calculators (note, she was coming in with a ~$10,000 down payment and this was supposed to be a ~7000 note with a 3 year term).
Me: Your payments are way outside of what I expected. Give me the final sales price, I’ll shop this thru my bank. (Much discussion about how their ‘estimated rate’ exceeds my bank rate by ~4%)
Dealer: Well, as you saw on Autotrader the sales price is X (something like $16,000). But we’ve added Lojack and Ceramic Tint and (some sort of paint protection…forget just what it was called), so the price is $X,XXX.XX (somewhere around $5,000) higher
Me: I didn’t ask for *any of that* crap. You’ve boosted the price by 20+ % over what you advertised. Give me the Autotrader price.
Dealer: Those are ‘Dealer Add-ons’…we’ve already paid for them.
Me: I get that. I didn’t ask for them. Take them off, I want the Autotrader price.
Dealer: We can’t…they’re bought and paid for. If you would tell a dealer anywhere in this state not to include add-ons, they’d laugh you out the door…this is where we make our money.
Me: Fine. Take your bait and switch and shove it. I’ll find something else.
Dealer: Weeeellllll, it’s the end of the month. We can disable the Lojack, and charge you only a thousand bucks for the other two – that’s a huge discount.
Me: I appreciate your flexibility. But I still didn’t ask for them. Take them off, I want the Autotrader price. Otherwise, I’m gone.
Dealer: OK, it’s the last day of the month…how about the Autotrader price plus $250 (representing a ~$4,500 discount off of the first price they gave me).
Me: fine
The tint was actually a nice feature…even if I didn’t ask for it.
When I said a 1999 Toyota Camry 4-cyl wasn’t really high performance, he said that the engine really performs above 6000 RPM. The then proceeds to rev the engine to just below where I think the limiter would kick in. Holds it there for a good 30 seconds while telling me that at that RPM it is putting out somewhere over 200 HP, easy. The sales manager comes storming out of the front doors yelling something that at least the salesman could make out over the painful screams of the engine. He immediately shut off the engine and asked if i wanted to go in and get the paperwork started on that car. I excused myself, not wanting to see what the manager lurking at the front door was going to do to that guy….and I didn’t want a Camry.
Second experience was when I was looking at an SS Monte Carlo. The FWD, 3.4L from the late 90s. Salesman said that it had double the HP of the regular MCs and was what the current NASCAR Chevys were built on. Little did he know that I knew the SS was only an appearance package (unique paint and SS stitching in the seats). I certainly knew that NASCAR hadn’t built any of the cars off production models since at least the 1970s.
Tell me you ended up getting a Monte eventually. I saw one in the wild the other day, and it just made my whole afternoon.
Nah. The salesman and two former linebackers for the OU football team blocked me into a cubical and wouldn’t let me out till I started yelling that I was leaving or it was going to become a police matter.
The whole reason I walked was that the salesman started scribbling numbers all over a blank sheet of paper while negotiating and telling me to sign at the bottom, now, because I had wasted his time. When I started scratching out the old numbers he got pissed and started a new sheet. He then started adding zeros below the other zeros in a price like $23,000 so that you could easily read it as $23,888. Basically the number he wanted was above MSRP and that was before the documentation fee, trade in fee, prep fee, tag fee, tags, title fee, credit check fee (even if paying cash) and taxes. That dealer was scummy AF.
A lot of the dealers all considered the Monte Carlo SS as something super premium special. This was Oklahoma at the turn of the century. Kinda soured me to that car and I was only luke warm to it to begin with.
Correction: I need to correct one thing. It was probably a model year 2000 car. The melted looking body style. Not 1998.
Yikes that’s an ordeal. They were cool cars (I miss the old personal luxury coupes), but not that cool.
I have a soft spot in my heart for the Mercury Cougar coupes and Ford Thunderbarges.
“If you buy the red one from that other dealer, people will think you’re gay”
Walked right out of that place, and never came back.
Did that guy previously sell Orange Juliuses?
I was at a used car lit, and the salesman insisted the Taurus was RWD because they raced them in NASCAR.
I just let that go…
Ford dealer. Salesman who had already lied repeatedly. Would not tell me the price, would only show me handwritten monthly lease payments. I said, “What’s the money factor?” He stared at me for ten full seconds and said, “What’s a money what?”
Sales:
“See this number here? This is what our last out of warranty infotainment repair cost.”
*waves at chalk board with $2,672 written on it*
“Wouldn’t you like to get our extended warranty on this used car?”
….
Me:
“Shouldn’t I go buy a more reliable car?”
Insane tactic.
And even then, like…damn. I don’t know if I’ve ever had an infotainment issue in a car that wasn’t self-inflicted (upgrades, etc.). So if those fail, it’s almost certainly a f*ckup on the manufacturer’s part, in my own mental calculus.
I’ll try to remember that one!
Growing up, my dad was a truck driver, and my mom a stay at home mom with 4 kids. The amount of dealers she walked out of because they said something along the lines of “Maybe you should go discuss it with your husband” is very high.
There has been a shit ton of crazy stuff they have said to me. Like 90% of what they say is utter and total crap. They are like the Pathological liar guy on SNL, only worse.
But I think my last encounter was the best. Said he was a retired CIA hit man. And that he spent 7 years undercover in Afghanistan searching for Bin Laden. Then he claimed to have been a part of the fatal raid on his compound.
I couldn’t help but wonder how he went from that to selling Hondas.
It was a real struggle to keep my composure and not break out in insane laughter.
This sounds like the most ridiculous thing a guy has told me in a gas station parking lot while asking for money to “buy gas”
I had a guy tell me that he had an arrangement with the CIA where they would use his base model, regular cab white Ford Ranger for undercover missions. He pointed to his front license plate with a CIA seal in it as proof.
We both worked at a Piggly Wiggly in Georgia.
He just didn’t want to admit that he was really using the truck to drive Miss Daisy to the Pig.
I had a 60something year old guy at a car show tell me he owned a Diablo and a Countach and used to party with Ronnie Milsap, he just happened to have brought his base model 2010 Challenger SE with vinyl stickers and fake hood pins to the show that particular day. I mean, maybe?, but seems pretty unlikely, also, snagging a random stranger on his way to the hot dog cart just to brag about yourself for several minutes straight with no breath doesn’t really help you in the cool department
At that same store, I had a guy tell me he worked for a guy who had a Corvette from every year, all the way back to 1949.
1949 is one of my favourite years for Corvettes – that and 1983.
Bwahahaha!
The key to a good lie, IMHO, is that it is not SUPER crazy. If he said “I partied with Beyonce”, I’d know it was a lie. But Ronnie Milsap (and this isn’t a slam against him), I could see the guy being at a bar, and Ronnie Milsap was at the bar, and he bought Ronnie Milsap a beer, and Milsap, being a decent guy, spoke with him for 20 minutes or so… It’s a good detail.
That’s the genius of it
Could have always been Dr. Ronald Milsap, DMD (periodontist)
Or Jon Voight.
Ha! LeBaron convertible!
I legitimately played golf once with Gerald Ford. Except, this Gerald Ford was just a normal guy from the San Diego area. It was really his name, he was cool, and we had a lot of fun with it. “Your putt, Mr. President.” “If I catch you improving your lie, will the Secret Service have to kill me, Mr. President?” “Nice drive, Mr. President – are you sure you’re not an impostor?” (on the last one, President Ford was notoriously a pretty bad golfer and if I recall correctly there was at least one famous incident of him hitting a bystander with an errant shot)
I have known two gangly white dudes named Michael Jordan in my life…
I frequently go drinking, watch movies and play video games with Keith Urban. He’s just my college buddy and not the singer but no one needs to know that part!
Nothing says undercover CIA like a CIA badge on the plate?
Nobody who was actually the things he says he was is ever allowed to talk about it.
Unprompted, I had a salesperson tell me the insulation on the inside of the hood was actually a fire suppression system. He wanted me to believe, that in the case of a fire, the insulation would melt onto the engine block and smother flames. He also told me the Mazda3 I was looking at was “basically the same as an Audi”. Then he took my wife 20 feet away and down a small hill so I could “bond with the car.”
They tried that one on my wife. I assumed it was a “here’s how you talk to women to make the car seem like it would be safe” tactic.
The whole thing was odd because we were upfront that she had to like the car as well because it would likely end up being hers in a couple years. Needless to say, that guy didn’t make what would have likely been an easy sale.
“Take me 20 feet away and down a small hill” sounds like a euphemism for something.
Around 2010 at a local Ford dealer in Charlotte, NC. Went to test Drive a 2008 Mustang GT. Sales Guy giving the usual BS, Asked if I wanted a test Drive. Gave My license and get in the car start it up, first red flag he tells me it’s the same engine as the Shelby 500, shaking my head at this I put the car in first and immediately you hear a horrible popping noise and could feel it in the steering wheel when you turned the car right or left, the Sales guy looked at me with a straight face and said that that was normal for high performance struts. Had not even left the parking lot when he said this. I looked at the guy and just laughed, turned around and parked the car, asked for my license back and walked away the whole time he kept talking about the deal he could do to get me in the car that day.
Classic Ford ball joints