Ford tried to make the '96 Taurus more of a premium car like Toyota had done with the '92 Camry and gave it a premium price to go with it. Meanwhile Toyota was working on an updated Camry that was designed to be cheaper for them to build and lost some of its premium feel that they debuted in the fall of 1996 which made life difficult for Ford and Ford dealers.
People coming out of those 24 month Red carpet leases after the '96 Taurus came out got quite the shock when they saw what their new 24 month payment was for the new Taurus.
Interesting note about those leases that brought back some old memories. My grandfather was a Ford engineer and he and Grandma both had matching Tauri (different colors but same frugal GL specs) leases for a while. I seem to remember the bubble cars pushing $300 a month to lease which now seems ridiculous for the time period. They went on to lease loaded Windstars, a Freestar, and an Eddie Bauer Explorer throughout the 2000s for a very similar payment.
My Uncle who also was a Ford engineer, had a Sable lease and got a Marauder lease when those came out in 2003. I remember it was less than a $100 difference in lease payment vs a Sable. I could go off on a very unrelated tangent about that Marauder; would love to own one some day.
I was around twenty when my buddy and I got drunk and climbed some sand dunes near the ocean. We were sitting atop one of the highest of the dunes getting drunker and higher when we spotted two young ladies on a trail below that weaved between the dunes. From that height and distance, they looked promising, so Darrell (name changed to protect the not so innocent) started hooting and hollering to get their attention. They stopped and looked up at us, and then shouted for us to come down to them, which we did without hesitation in great loping strides down the dune. When we neared them, the early promise of a good looking pair faded the closer we got, but they greeted us warmly, and we shared our various substances with them. I was pretty wrecked by this point, but had some concerns with the appearance of these two. They weren’t wearing make-up and their clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed for a while. Not super stained or outright dirty, they just didn’t look as clean as I would have liked.
I was growing increasingly enthusiastic about wishing these ladies all the best and making a graceful exit to try again somewhere else, but Darrell was just getting warmed up. Despite my hoarsely whispered appeals in his ear to ditch them, it wasn’t long before we were headed to their place nearby in a badly ageing townhouse complex. The interior was pretty disgusting even to me at a time when I was pretty relaxed about these things. The couches, end tables, and coffee table were covered in empty pizza boxes, newspapers, magazines, pop cans, etc., and I doubted that the carpet had ever been graced by the presence of a vacuum cleaner. I cleared a spot to sit on the couch and tried to focus on a withdrawal strategy while Darrell and one of the girls laughed hysterically about something she had said to him. The other girl was cranking up some Deep Purple on the stereo cassette deck and loudly expressing her desire for pizza when her girlfriend disappeared upstairs. Darrell turned to me and asked if I could get some more beer when I picked up the pizza, and before I could object, bounded up the stairs in pursuit of his new friend.
Deep Purple girl was now trying to snuggle up to me and I was doing everything I could to maintain a healthy distance between us.
“I’m pretty hungry, so I better go pickup the pizza”
“Awww, they can deliver it”
“It’s much cheaper to pick it up, and besides, I need to get some beers as well. Later”.
I almost ran out the door. I sat in the car for a while before leaving to run my errands and then reluctantly return to the townhouse.
To my dismay Darrell and his girl were still upstairs, so I kept Deep Purple girl busy with pizza and beer although I suspect she would have gladly multitasked the food and alcohol while performing some unspeakable act on me.
Eventually Darrell came back downstairs alone and happily dug into the remaining pizza and beer. When DPG stepped away to answer the call of nature or God knows what, Darrell leaned over to me with a grimace; “when I got her pants off, she smelled awful.”
He chewed his pizza and thought some more before adding; “it was so bad I had to get up and open the window.”
“Jesus Christ. So was it worth it?”
“Oh hell ‘ya”, he grinned and looked around. “C’mon, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Drinking is poison and is bad for you, however I would be a much less interesting, well-travelled, and experienced person without it.
I am the person I am today because I always found it fun in my younger years to have some drinks and see what happens…
Now, though, I drink a lot less than I did in my 20s, and my fiancée and I go out and get drunk together sometimes. It really is the best of all possible worlds.
Thanks man. It’s got nothing to do with dealerships, T birds, or any apparent parallel with Rodney’s story, but I still felt compelled to recount it for some reason. Maybe just as an observation of how much we all differ with our thresholds for debauchery.
To this day I can’t fathom why he went back for more after feeling it necessary to open the window….
Personally the reason I subscribe here is for these slices of life / meditations on our shared reality. Perhaps on a certain level it seems somewhat trivial but on another level it recapitulates Jacks “Parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper” from several years ago.
Many approaches to life. And the differences between these approaches can be really trenchant … or really really funny. Thanks for sharing yours
I really loved that Ford 4.6. It was sooo smooth in Crown Vic’s. Which the 4 speed AOD usually matched with beautifully. I did a fair bit of driving in a 92 Crown Vic and a 95 Grand Marquis. Loved them both. I don’t know of anything available nowadays that provides that such a great ride, with the smoothness and silence of that package. Lovely cars.
I remember when a friend started going on about what a great driving car a 90s Grand Marquis was, I thought he was high until I drove one. Turns out he was right.
All of these have a console. Front bench seats are peak luxury. You can manspread AND get handsy with your female passenger. Nothing else offers this.
The only thing that comes close is a McLaren F1. I think I’m stealing this from Jack, but the fact that you can drive AND get serviced by two simultaneously makes it the best sports car ever. After which, you can mute their headsets.
The lack of a center console in everything except lower-spec trucks is tragic for the reasons of comfort and closeness stated above. There is a way that these American land yachts, old and new, float over the road that is distinct from foreign makes, especially when factoring in the price. I need to stop caring about driving manuals--in cars or bench seat trucks--and get with the procrea--er, program.
Now you guys have me looking for old barges for cheap, and I am finding some. Oh boy...
Most of the newer minivans have these horrible tall consoles to trick offended moms into believing they're not driving a totally uncool minivan. A non-trivial part of why we bought our Town&Country was the unobtrusive and *removable* center console. All kinds of knee room and just space in general around the driver's seat. The Pacificas no longer have a removable console iirc, but the dash/console is still unobtrusive. If they weren't popping headgaskets all over the place I'd consider one as a replacement for our T&C.
I've had a LOT of Ford modular engines pass through my hands and agree the 4.6L 2v was a good motor. It might need valve seals, blow the plugs out and maybe need timing chain sets, but they generally went the distance and were easy and cheap to work on.
It's about on the level of, but actually worse than, being a Nice Catholic Boy Night Cashier (and the only employee present at night) in a snooty little wine shop adjacent to the Brown University campus. Circa 1974.
Half-drunk gay guys would try to pick me up, and half-drunk MILFs (of course, by that I only mean "Mature Intelligent Lady Friends"!) would also try.
But the advantage was, unlike the Volkswagen Dealership, once a customer decided to buy a Vieux Telegraphe or an Hermitage or whatever, you didn't have to go through the Finance Manager, who kept Girl-on-Girl Porn running behind the financial-software windows on his dealership desktop computer.
You rung the wine up, and they paid. I bought an Unfiltered Parducci Cabernet Sauvignon 1968, and asked my sister to hold it for me until I graduated from law school... it was nice!
Back to the wine shop. The Music Director of a local theater company was amicable, but he never hit on me, he never invited me to his place for dinner. One night, he was shopping, and a "mature" actress from that company came in, and, as per her norm, flirted with me.
I explained that I was from the Wrong Side of Route 95, and so my Morning Job was cleaning the bathrooms in a girls' dorm, from 6:30 AM on. So she left.
The music director had taken the whole thing in, and after she left, in a confidential tone of voice, he said to me, "Now THERE goes a Leading Lady who really enjoys a Warm Hand Upon Her OPENING." I thought I was gonna die.
At the stinky VW shop, I never got laid. But there were two young-lady buyers who paid cash, and they just reeked of Old Money. I would have married either of them.
Actually, the mother of one of them came back and asked to speak to the sales manager. She told him, "I thought that John was overplaying his hand when he said he had been a car mechanic and worked on racing cars, and he really thought we should pay the $625 or whatever it was for Pre-Owned Certification, so I just bought it to shut him up.
"But in the first month, that saved us more than $1100 for a new Air Mass Sensor. And, unlike your detestable Finance Guy, John always treated my daughter with total respect, and never any inappropriate familiarity."
On her way out she stopped at my desk and quietly expressed her appreciation, but she also said that she would tell her extensive circle of friends that with one exception, everyone who worked there were pigs.
I relayed this to the Sales Manager, and he whined, "But he is like a BROTHER to me!!!"
We don’t darken the doors of a car dealership often but we have shopped/purchased three times in the last six months. All different brands. Long story.
Surveying the various sales teams, it seems to have turned into a fairly young man’s game with the exception of one rep who looked straight out of Glengarry Glen Ross. In fact the consistently top Kia salesman is only 21 years old. He’s the son of a Turkish immigrant and a fairly devote Muslim.
It takes a very specific type of person to be good at and also enjoy car sales.
Do YOU like working extremely high pressure jobs 5-6 days, 60+ hours per week with non-consecutive days off? Do you like dealing with lowest IQ people on the planet for 4 hours at a time to maybe make $150? Do you like convincing a single mother of three who makes $45k/yr that what her babies really need is that used Sorento out back with a $2000 “interior protection package”?
I’m hyperbolizing a bit, but I’ve been around these types for a most of my career now to know I could absolutely never hack it and, even more so, I would never want to try.
That said, it’s a path to a six figure job with absolutely zero education or, frankly, experience requirements. It’s not a bad gig if you can do it.
Back in the late 2000s a friend used to say selling cars was one of the few legitimate jobs where a guy with a sixth grade education could make $100k+ per year.
Usually, yeah you'll be on the floor most of your waking hours.
If you've been around for forever, you can usually bank something close to that just off referals and new leases to returning customers.
Also I've met some guys who make a KILLING doing commercial fleet sales. I'd imagine it has its own challenges, but they'll move dozens of trucks at once. When you can sell 30 step vans to someone across the country for 2.5 mil, the commission money is quite nice.
I can’t imagine having enough of a Rolodex to be able to keep up steady return business consistently! To have enough to cycle through that every three years, assuming they all lease!
Seconded! These stories of Jack's dealerships days were what got me hooked and proved how special his brand of storytelling was (even if he was drunk).
At the time this generation of Thunderbird came out, my next-door neighbor was a manager at the plant that made these. He came home with a preproduction example one day and tossed the keys to me and my buddy, and told us to take it out and let him know what we thought. Having spent most of my driving career up to that point in my mom’s Escort station wagon, it was the greatest day of my teenage life.
It's definitely Menards. Run there at least once a week. The end of the rail line is a General RV. Pretty sad honestly because they had a little loop of a running track back there and they just cleared and filled to make the land developable. The rest of the lot is now a Wayfair warehouse and some limited Amazon/mail order style facilities.
It was the assembly plant in Lorain, Ohio. There used to be several auto plants and steel mills in the area when I was growing up. They largely shut down in the 80s and 90s and it really devastated the area. Sad to go back there now.
My brothers have had both this generation of 'Bird and its platform mate, the Mark VIII. Sadly, in all my travels, I never got to drive either of them. Always lovely-looking cars when kept up. The Mark VIII, I was told, absolutely flew.
I loved my $600 ghettoflaged '93 Super Coupe. It wasn't a stick, and it needed new head gaskets (which I can proudly say I replaced start-to-finish in the parking lot of the VatoZone I worked at in Chicago on one LONG Thursday), but it was perfect for rolling around Chi-Town. No "aspiring rapper" or "good boy" in his right mind would nick that crapcan.
Oh sure, the oil was glittery and the tranny fluid smelled burned no matter how many times I changed them, but it never left me stranded.
I would be so pissed if I were on the eve of getting an awesome Thunderbird and then it was snatched from me. The least they could have done was let you roll around in it, especially because it was lot poison.
No kidding. I'd be livid. Gloss black on a sleek coupe, comfy cloth seats, and a 4.6L? That's how I would spec it as well, and it would break my heart to see it every day but not get to drive it.
I've done a lot of questionable things, taken morally reprehensible actions, knowingly committed criminal acts, and held myself in contempt like Fletcher Reed in Liar Liar. But I've never been a sales manager at a car dealership or bike shop. This is Rodney's saving grace that he never rose to that level of amorality and stayed in his chaotic evil lane.
Who among us has not Rodneyed, when given the opportunity and means?
Speaking of chaotic, the Rockford Files are streaming on Amazon. The nostalgia bludgeons like a tetsubo upholstered in brown polyester. The background and b-roll are super entertaining just for car spotting and seeing all the old stuff I'd forgotten existed. The dialog is so much smarter and more emotionally complex that the drek we now have. The direction is thoughtful and artsy at times. Garner was a real man, too.
Several years ago, before the 'vid, my wife and i watched a couple episodes of "the dukes of hazzard."
Now that is a show, that despite squeaky-clean morality and political correctness, you could never in a million years make today. It was:
-Entertaining without being debasing
-christian in morality
-empowering to men ruled over by tyranny
-educational (barely) on the fundamental illegitimacy of tyranny, and in a joke-hollywood context, how to evade chases and squirm out of sticky situations with said legal tyranny
-educational that bows and arrows are not illegal and while not compact, are unregulated and ahh, about as lethal as you would want a tool to be
All in all, to the people who run hollywood, its straight to SHUT IT DOWN city. A shame
There’s an episode where Rockford uses a computer to pull down information on people. This eventually leads him to a shady abandoned neighborhood that’s actually a giant data center where these records are kept. Yeah, I’ll say that the show holds up.
I grew up watching The Rockford Files (and Miami Vice) with my dad. When I think of LA, it’s somewhere in between that and The Fast and the Furious. I’ve partially avoided going there because I don’t want to have my dreams broken.
I'm just here to support the James Elroy callout. The LA Quartet and the Underworld Trilogy are fantastic. I ought to pick up the Second LA Quartet. Been awhile since I've read any Elroy...
One of the reasons was …….. child car seats. Once you had to stuff those into the back seat of a two door car, and strap the kiddo in, those became undesirable.
That didn't stop my father from buying a 1973 240Z when I was seven and my sister was five. I spent a fair amount of my childhood lying on the package shelf, legs tucked behind the passenger seat, staring up through the back glass...
I dragged my kid around in a 993 and for 6 years we put a car seat in an Accord Coupe. But if you're not a car person I can see why that doesn't feel like it's worth doing.
I've always thought the MN12 never got the love it deserved from the public. The best derivative was the Mark VIII, of which I would happily put a nice '98 model in my collection.
I worked on and drove a lot of them in that era circa 15 years ago. Did a lot of J mods to the transmissions. If the right one passes by some day ill pick it up.
Driver quality with decent interiors, yeah 3-5k. They aren't immaculate on the outside, but I don't need one to be as long as the interior is still decent and that 32v heart still pumps.
I had a '96 Cougar. Knowing now that personal luxury coupes would disappear from our landscape I wish I had appreciated it more but at the time I was craving a '79 T-bird.
I always appreciated these but never looked at them seriously because, as a gigging string quartet musician in my college years and those immediately following, I relied heavily on my Taurus's ability to fit a string quartet's worth of instruments in the trunk with uncanny precision, as well as the musicians with reasonable comfort and dignity in the cabin.
But I think a nice '93-'94 V8 example (which is far better-looking than the cladding-festooned '95-'96) would make a fine toy car today, if I didn't already have two toys.
weird how a big v8 car could be cheaper than the little taurus
anyway im not sure id be willing to smash someone double my age that i need to have a bag over their head even if i might wind up with a sportbike
Ford tried to make the '96 Taurus more of a premium car like Toyota had done with the '92 Camry and gave it a premium price to go with it. Meanwhile Toyota was working on an updated Camry that was designed to be cheaper for them to build and lost some of its premium feel that they debuted in the fall of 1996 which made life difficult for Ford and Ford dealers.
People coming out of those 24 month Red carpet leases after the '96 Taurus came out got quite the shock when they saw what their new 24 month payment was for the new Taurus.
Interesting note about those leases that brought back some old memories. My grandfather was a Ford engineer and he and Grandma both had matching Tauri (different colors but same frugal GL specs) leases for a while. I seem to remember the bubble cars pushing $300 a month to lease which now seems ridiculous for the time period. They went on to lease loaded Windstars, a Freestar, and an Eddie Bauer Explorer throughout the 2000s for a very similar payment.
My Uncle who also was a Ford engineer, had a Sable lease and got a Marauder lease when those came out in 2003. I remember it was less than a $100 difference in lease payment vs a Sable. I could go off on a very unrelated tangent about that Marauder; would love to own one some day.
don't knock it till you try it!
What if she was a really nice person and threw in a Miata racing motor?
Then I've have crawled over Rodney to get there!
Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
I was around twenty when my buddy and I got drunk and climbed some sand dunes near the ocean. We were sitting atop one of the highest of the dunes getting drunker and higher when we spotted two young ladies on a trail below that weaved between the dunes. From that height and distance, they looked promising, so Darrell (name changed to protect the not so innocent) started hooting and hollering to get their attention. They stopped and looked up at us, and then shouted for us to come down to them, which we did without hesitation in great loping strides down the dune. When we neared them, the early promise of a good looking pair faded the closer we got, but they greeted us warmly, and we shared our various substances with them. I was pretty wrecked by this point, but had some concerns with the appearance of these two. They weren’t wearing make-up and their clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed for a while. Not super stained or outright dirty, they just didn’t look as clean as I would have liked.
I was growing increasingly enthusiastic about wishing these ladies all the best and making a graceful exit to try again somewhere else, but Darrell was just getting warmed up. Despite my hoarsely whispered appeals in his ear to ditch them, it wasn’t long before we were headed to their place nearby in a badly ageing townhouse complex. The interior was pretty disgusting even to me at a time when I was pretty relaxed about these things. The couches, end tables, and coffee table were covered in empty pizza boxes, newspapers, magazines, pop cans, etc., and I doubted that the carpet had ever been graced by the presence of a vacuum cleaner. I cleared a spot to sit on the couch and tried to focus on a withdrawal strategy while Darrell and one of the girls laughed hysterically about something she had said to him. The other girl was cranking up some Deep Purple on the stereo cassette deck and loudly expressing her desire for pizza when her girlfriend disappeared upstairs. Darrell turned to me and asked if I could get some more beer when I picked up the pizza, and before I could object, bounded up the stairs in pursuit of his new friend.
Deep Purple girl was now trying to snuggle up to me and I was doing everything I could to maintain a healthy distance between us.
“I’m pretty hungry, so I better go pickup the pizza”
“Awww, they can deliver it”
“It’s much cheaper to pick it up, and besides, I need to get some beers as well. Later”.
I almost ran out the door. I sat in the car for a while before leaving to run my errands and then reluctantly return to the townhouse.
To my dismay Darrell and his girl were still upstairs, so I kept Deep Purple girl busy with pizza and beer although I suspect she would have gladly multitasked the food and alcohol while performing some unspeakable act on me.
Eventually Darrell came back downstairs alone and happily dug into the remaining pizza and beer. When DPG stepped away to answer the call of nature or God knows what, Darrell leaned over to me with a grimace; “when I got her pants off, she smelled awful.”
He chewed his pizza and thought some more before adding; “it was so bad I had to get up and open the window.”
“Jesus Christ. So was it worth it?”
“Oh hell ‘ya”, he grinned and looked around. “C’mon, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
not drinking has probably kept me from some good stories but its prevented me from making some really bad ones too
That's what's known as "ZACKLY" ~ when the front hole smells as bad as the back hole .
'Darren' was a real trouper, that's when I'd bail out .
-Nate
😂
I s'pose I shouldn't admit I know what it is but my teenage years were fairly wild .
In the end, I won't put my dick in anything I won't run my nose through .
-Nate
The bad ones are also fun.
Drinking is poison and is bad for you, however I would be a much less interesting, well-travelled, and experienced person without it.
I am the person I am today because I always found it fun in my younger years to have some drinks and see what happens…
Now, though, I drink a lot less than I did in my 20s, and my fiancée and I go out and get drunk together sometimes. It really is the best of all possible worlds.
This story should be its own post.
Say the word and I’ll make it so!
Thanks man. It’s got nothing to do with dealerships, T birds, or any apparent parallel with Rodney’s story, but I still felt compelled to recount it for some reason. Maybe just as an observation of how much we all differ with our thresholds for debauchery.
To this day I can’t fathom why he went back for more after feeling it necessary to open the window….
I LOLed at this one too.
Personally the reason I subscribe here is for these slices of life / meditations on our shared reality. Perhaps on a certain level it seems somewhat trivial but on another level it recapitulates Jacks “Parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper” from several years ago.
Many approaches to life. And the differences between these approaches can be really trenchant … or really really funny. Thanks for sharing yours
Yeah, I kind of want to pin it!
The ACF subheadings, Car Reviews Cat Tales etc., should include "Rodney".
Moss is the boss, of course. Do as he asks; it's the simplest of tasks.
Yeah, I probably should.
Why are the worst of us so often the fount of sagas and epics?
Sometimes the apparent worst demonstrate some of the most honorable attributes.
Apparently, Rodney's honorable attributes were largely confined to Being Honest, in an "at least you know who he really is" way.
I was going to suggest this if it wasn't suggested already.
I really loved that Ford 4.6. It was sooo smooth in Crown Vic’s. Which the 4 speed AOD usually matched with beautifully. I did a fair bit of driving in a 92 Crown Vic and a 95 Grand Marquis. Loved them both. I don’t know of anything available nowadays that provides that such a great ride, with the smoothness and silence of that package. Lovely cars.
I remember when a friend started going on about what a great driving car a 90s Grand Marquis was, I thought he was high until I drove one. Turns out he was right.
Range Rover, Land Rover Discovery, any post 2000ish Bentley or Rolls Royce, any full size Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Jaguar. The Lexus LS, ES.
Rivian R1S
Probably a bunch I missed. You can easily do better than those cars, you just won't for 20k anymore
All of these have a console. Front bench seats are peak luxury. You can manspread AND get handsy with your female passenger. Nothing else offers this.
The only thing that comes close is a McLaren F1. I think I’m stealing this from Jack, but the fact that you can drive AND get serviced by two simultaneously makes it the best sports car ever. After which, you can mute their headsets.
The lack of a center console in everything except lower-spec trucks is tragic for the reasons of comfort and closeness stated above. There is a way that these American land yachts, old and new, float over the road that is distinct from foreign makes, especially when factoring in the price. I need to stop caring about driving manuals--in cars or bench seat trucks--and get with the procrea--er, program.
Now you guys have me looking for old barges for cheap, and I am finding some. Oh boy...
Most of the newer minivans have these horrible tall consoles to trick offended moms into believing they're not driving a totally uncool minivan. A non-trivial part of why we bought our Town&Country was the unobtrusive and *removable* center console. All kinds of knee room and just space in general around the driver's seat. The Pacificas no longer have a removable console iirc, but the dash/console is still unobtrusive. If they weren't popping headgaskets all over the place I'd consider one as a replacement for our T&C.
Oh yeah, never thought of that. Gordon Murray IS truly a genius 😁
I've had a LOT of Ford modular engines pass through my hands and agree the 4.6L 2v was a good motor. It might need valve seals, blow the plugs out and maybe need timing chain sets, but they generally went the distance and were easy and cheap to work on.
Love these tales from the dealership stories. More re-runs please.
Off topic, but how much does being a car salesman suck?
It's about on the level of, but actually worse than, being a Nice Catholic Boy Night Cashier (and the only employee present at night) in a snooty little wine shop adjacent to the Brown University campus. Circa 1974.
Half-drunk gay guys would try to pick me up, and half-drunk MILFs (of course, by that I only mean "Mature Intelligent Lady Friends"!) would also try.
But the advantage was, unlike the Volkswagen Dealership, once a customer decided to buy a Vieux Telegraphe or an Hermitage or whatever, you didn't have to go through the Finance Manager, who kept Girl-on-Girl Porn running behind the financial-software windows on his dealership desktop computer.
You rung the wine up, and they paid. I bought an Unfiltered Parducci Cabernet Sauvignon 1968, and asked my sister to hold it for me until I graduated from law school... it was nice!
Back to the wine shop. The Music Director of a local theater company was amicable, but he never hit on me, he never invited me to his place for dinner. One night, he was shopping, and a "mature" actress from that company came in, and, as per her norm, flirted with me.
I explained that I was from the Wrong Side of Route 95, and so my Morning Job was cleaning the bathrooms in a girls' dorm, from 6:30 AM on. So she left.
The music director had taken the whole thing in, and after she left, in a confidential tone of voice, he said to me, "Now THERE goes a Leading Lady who really enjoys a Warm Hand Upon Her OPENING." I thought I was gonna die.
At the stinky VW shop, I never got laid. But there were two young-lady buyers who paid cash, and they just reeked of Old Money. I would have married either of them.
Actually, the mother of one of them came back and asked to speak to the sales manager. She told him, "I thought that John was overplaying his hand when he said he had been a car mechanic and worked on racing cars, and he really thought we should pay the $625 or whatever it was for Pre-Owned Certification, so I just bought it to shut him up.
"But in the first month, that saved us more than $1100 for a new Air Mass Sensor. And, unlike your detestable Finance Guy, John always treated my daughter with total respect, and never any inappropriate familiarity."
On her way out she stopped at my desk and quietly expressed her appreciation, but she also said that she would tell her extensive circle of friends that with one exception, everyone who worked there were pigs.
I relayed this to the Sales Manager, and he whined, "But he is like a BROTHER to me!!!"
My boot-heels walked.
We don’t darken the doors of a car dealership often but we have shopped/purchased three times in the last six months. All different brands. Long story.
Surveying the various sales teams, it seems to have turned into a fairly young man’s game with the exception of one rep who looked straight out of Glengarry Glen Ross. In fact the consistently top Kia salesman is only 21 years old. He’s the son of a Turkish immigrant and a fairly devote Muslim.
It takes a very specific type of person to be good at and also enjoy car sales.
Do YOU like working extremely high pressure jobs 5-6 days, 60+ hours per week with non-consecutive days off? Do you like dealing with lowest IQ people on the planet for 4 hours at a time to maybe make $150? Do you like convincing a single mother of three who makes $45k/yr that what her babies really need is that used Sorento out back with a $2000 “interior protection package”?
I’m hyperbolizing a bit, but I’ve been around these types for a most of my career now to know I could absolutely never hack it and, even more so, I would never want to try.
That said, it’s a path to a six figure job with absolutely zero education or, frankly, experience requirements. It’s not a bad gig if you can do it.
Back in the late 2000s a friend used to say selling cars was one of the few legitimate jobs where a guy with a sixth grade education could make $100k+ per year.
How the fuck do you make 6 figs doing that and still have some semblance of life away from the sales floor? I'd bet the answer is "you don't."
It depends.
Usually, yeah you'll be on the floor most of your waking hours.
If you've been around for forever, you can usually bank something close to that just off referals and new leases to returning customers.
Also I've met some guys who make a KILLING doing commercial fleet sales. I'd imagine it has its own challenges, but they'll move dozens of trucks at once. When you can sell 30 step vans to someone across the country for 2.5 mil, the commission money is quite nice.
I can’t imagine having enough of a Rolodex to be able to keep up steady return business consistently! To have enough to cycle through that every three years, assuming they all lease!
I can’t imagine making six figures via $150 spiff sales.
+1 and it feels like its been a while since we revisited an old Car and Driver comparo - I loved that when ACF was younger.
Definitely more 90s dealership and car stuff! (Like 1992 pontiac grand prix STEs, as just a totally random example of a 90s car)
I'm ahem waiting on the full story about one.
Seconded! These stories of Jack's dealerships days were what got me hooked and proved how special his brand of storytelling was (even if he was drunk).
Some day I’m going to ask the three guys sitting at the desk together in the new car showroom what exactly their job (role) is.
At the time this generation of Thunderbird came out, my next-door neighbor was a manager at the plant that made these. He came home with a preproduction example one day and tossed the keys to me and my buddy, and told us to take it out and let him know what we thought. Having spent most of my driving career up to that point in my mom’s Escort station wagon, it was the greatest day of my teenage life.
Wixom Assembly, Michigan. Long gone. I think it's a Menards now.
It's definitely Menards. Run there at least once a week. The end of the rail line is a General RV. Pretty sad honestly because they had a little loop of a running track back there and they just cleared and filled to make the land developable. The rest of the lot is now a Wayfair warehouse and some limited Amazon/mail order style facilities.
It was the assembly plant in Lorain, Ohio. There used to be several auto plants and steel mills in the area when I was growing up. They largely shut down in the 80s and 90s and it really devastated the area. Sad to go back there now.
The Mark VIII was definitely assembled at Wixom. At that time Lorain was a van plant cranking out E series IIRC. Ex Ford guy here.
I was referring to the Thunderbird being assembled in Lorain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorain_Assembly
My brothers have had both this generation of 'Bird and its platform mate, the Mark VIII. Sadly, in all my travels, I never got to drive either of them. Always lovely-looking cars when kept up. The Mark VIII, I was told, absolutely flew.
I liked these V8 thunderbirds as a young teenager.
Rodney sounds like a paradox. Walking to work, that shows incredible work ethic. His sales tactics, maybe another version of incredible.
Was this something of a taboo for these ladies in the 90s?
Great article, I won’t call it a story, because I think it rings true 😂.
I loved my $600 ghettoflaged '93 Super Coupe. It wasn't a stick, and it needed new head gaskets (which I can proudly say I replaced start-to-finish in the parking lot of the VatoZone I worked at in Chicago on one LONG Thursday), but it was perfect for rolling around Chi-Town. No "aspiring rapper" or "good boy" in his right mind would nick that crapcan.
Oh sure, the oil was glittery and the tranny fluid smelled burned no matter how many times I changed them, but it never left me stranded.
As always great story telling .
A work mate of mine bought one of the 'Birds, his was a V6 and had a factory _purple_ paint job .
As he was a cruiser not a racer it did him well .
-Nate
You mean that lilac color? Those were pretty cool.
Or was it Rose Mist?
I no longer recall but it was really pretty, no one believed it was a factory color .
-Nate
As I recall there was a dark purple too. Like you'd see on Plymouth Prowlers.
I would be so pissed if I were on the eve of getting an awesome Thunderbird and then it was snatched from me. The least they could have done was let you roll around in it, especially because it was lot poison.
No kidding. I'd be livid. Gloss black on a sleek coupe, comfy cloth seats, and a 4.6L? That's how I would spec it as well, and it would break my heart to see it every day but not get to drive it.
Not to sound pathetic, but it was about to be one of the highlights of a life that, up to that point, had mostly been marked by injury and despair.
I've done a lot of questionable things, taken morally reprehensible actions, knowingly committed criminal acts, and held myself in contempt like Fletcher Reed in Liar Liar. But I've never been a sales manager at a car dealership or bike shop. This is Rodney's saving grace that he never rose to that level of amorality and stayed in his chaotic evil lane.
Who among us has not Rodneyed, when given the opportunity and means?
Speaking of chaotic, the Rockford Files are streaming on Amazon. The nostalgia bludgeons like a tetsubo upholstered in brown polyester. The background and b-roll are super entertaining just for car spotting and seeing all the old stuff I'd forgotten existed. The dialog is so much smarter and more emotionally complex that the drek we now have. The direction is thoughtful and artsy at times. Garner was a real man, too.
“Who amongst us has not Rodneyed, when given the opportunity and means?”
That’s just beautiful, man.
I have a couple seasons of Rockford Files on dvd. Better than about 90% of current stuff.
The Streets of San Francisco is excellent too.
Police Squad!
https://youtu.be/vo4YFc6X9Xo?si=kNJ4GC_Ch1R1yPLu
Check this out:
https://open.spotify.com/track/6tttaX0XinHs1EdwXiBG4C?si=fuj7sJ6sR1yUMnUvUQoLnQ
Several years ago, before the 'vid, my wife and i watched a couple episodes of "the dukes of hazzard."
Now that is a show, that despite squeaky-clean morality and political correctness, you could never in a million years make today. It was:
-Entertaining without being debasing
-christian in morality
-empowering to men ruled over by tyranny
-educational (barely) on the fundamental illegitimacy of tyranny, and in a joke-hollywood context, how to evade chases and squirm out of sticky situations with said legal tyranny
-educational that bows and arrows are not illegal and while not compact, are unregulated and ahh, about as lethal as you would want a tool to be
All in all, to the people who run hollywood, its straight to SHUT IT DOWN city. A shame
Everything you said, plus
- the stunning beauty and raw sex appeal of Catherine Bach
- Mopars! Mopars! Mopars!
- the comedy team of James Best and Sorrell Booke
- Denver Pyle as the rock-steady PATRIARCH Jesse Duke
Plus Confederate flag, not even being controversial!
Funnily it was not quite so controversial before the worst people in the world retconned it into a symbol of raycism.
Also if we are spitballing good old television (do not waste time!), I would suggest only two shows not previously promoted here:
1) detective deluca, italian with subtitles. better than most feature films
2) the OG house of cards, by the BBC. It wasn't always the worst propaganda on earth over there, apparently!
There’s an episode where Rockford uses a computer to pull down information on people. This eventually leads him to a shady abandoned neighborhood that’s actually a giant data center where these records are kept. Yeah, I’ll say that the show holds up.
I grew up watching The Rockford Files (and Miami Vice) with my dad. When I think of LA, it’s somewhere in between that and The Fast and the Furious. I’ve partially avoided going there because I don’t want to have my dreams broken.
Chandler, Ellroy, Bukowski. I would love to visit LA but only mid-century LA.
I'm just here to support the James Elroy callout. The LA Quartet and the Underworld Trilogy are fantastic. I ought to pick up the Second LA Quartet. Been awhile since I've read any Elroy...
Robert Crais.
Seems like the buyer pool for these was pretty slim. One of my cousins got a new 96 or 97 as his first car; odd choice by his dad IMO.
Seems like the last hurrah of full size coupe buyers were older and moneyed and would go the route of the Mark VIII, Riv, or El Dorado over the Bird.
None of those sold for squat either, the late 90s was the death of the personal luxury coupe.
One of the reasons was …….. child car seats. Once you had to stuff those into the back seat of a two door car, and strap the kiddo in, those became undesirable.
That didn't stop my father from buying a 1973 240Z when I was seven and my sister was five. I spent a fair amount of my childhood lying on the package shelf, legs tucked behind the passenger seat, staring up through the back glass...
I dragged my kid around in a 993 and for 6 years we put a car seat in an Accord Coupe. But if you're not a car person I can see why that doesn't feel like it's worth doing.
To be fair, I'm sure John thought, "man, this car seat is SO MUCH BIGGER than the back seat in the 993!"
And now John is DRIVING that car!
All cars that would be lovely to run, on that note.
God grant me to know the things I can change, and also, the ability to change my car into a 2003 Buick Riviera or Regal GSX or...
I've always thought the MN12 never got the love it deserved from the public. The best derivative was the Mark VIII, of which I would happily put a nice '98 model in my collection.
You missed the boat on all the boomers selling them for 7-8k as they moved into memory care.
I worked on and drove a lot of them in that era circa 15 years ago. Did a lot of J mods to the transmissions. If the right one passes by some day ill pick it up.
That's ok, they're 2-5k now! I check on their FB Marketplace numbers on occasion.
Clean ones? There have always been some cheaper ones floating out there.
Id looked at a beautiful teal 97 way back in the day, but it was quite ratty
Driver quality with decent interiors, yeah 3-5k. They aren't immaculate on the outside, but I don't need one to be as long as the interior is still decent and that 32v heart still pumps.
I had a '96 Cougar. Knowing now that personal luxury coupes would disappear from our landscape I wish I had appreciated it more but at the time I was craving a '79 T-bird.
None of you all are helping me NOT want any and all of the cars mentioned in these comments...and I thank you for it!
When I become more of a thousandaire, I will have a garage full of these.
I always appreciated these but never looked at them seriously because, as a gigging string quartet musician in my college years and those immediately following, I relied heavily on my Taurus's ability to fit a string quartet's worth of instruments in the trunk with uncanny precision, as well as the musicians with reasonable comfort and dignity in the cabin.
But I think a nice '93-'94 V8 example (which is far better-looking than the cladding-festooned '95-'96) would make a fine toy car today, if I didn't already have two toys.
What happened to the world where coupes like this were replaced by porky combovers?
We turned men into women and women into whores.