In the spring of 1968 a customer walked into the Chevrolet dealership I worked at. He ordered a new '68 Impala SS427 Custom Coupe, Sequoia Green ( kind of a very dark charcoal grayish color), black vinyl roof and a black interior. Took 2 months or more for the car to be produced because of shortages of interior parts and the fact that he also wanted a special order axle ratio ( the doggy 2.73 ) and it required a special speedometer gear adapter. Car comes in early summer and he flat-out refuses it. He ordered it with black vinyl buckets and in error the salesman didn't check the box correctly and it got produced with a stupid cloth bench. This was a real odd SS427 we were now suck with. A mongrel in the true sense of a Super Sport. We did order another one for him, it got built very quickly and we delivered it to him by early July with the correct vinyl buckets. No one wanted this bench seat car. It sat in inventory all summer long. By mid August John B. our used car manager took it for a demo. He gave it up quickly, hated driving it. John passed it on to me a couple of weeks later with only 300 miles on it. I was in heaven! I'm a 20 year old punk gearhead currently driving my own 283 three year old Impala and I'm handed THIS! It was tough to get off the line or get started on a steep hill but I could live with it. All I had to do was keep gas in it, wash it every few days and show it to everyone who came within 25' of it. Funny thing is my brother and I would take it to New England dragway on weekends (just to spectate, I wouldn't race a company demonstrator) and I would see the guy dragging the second one with the correct buckets we ordered for him almost every Sunday that fall. I don't recall his times but with a 2.73 axle it had to be pretty lazy. We carried my demo 427 deep into the next model year and it finally went away. Nice ride for a punk kid just out of technical college earning $100 / week. In another upcoming chapter I'll have to relay the story to you about my short lived romance with a new Rally Green Z28 during Thanksgiving when the new 1969's just came out. Got a lot of dealership tales on my plate.
My family has owned various repair stations and new car dealerships over the past few decades, needless to say I have a few good stories. As I find time, I will post them. The previous post about the dump truck and police car jogged my memory about an incident I was involved in. My Father and I owned a Ford dealership in our hometown of Spring Valley, IL. The following happened about 10 years ago. I was the first one at our dealership in the mornings. Usually arrived around 6:30am to get paperwork done before the day got too busy. One morning after I was done with my pre-opening routine. I went to the service drive to pull out our F-450 flat bed car hauler which was parked inside the night before. I had a door opener in the cab. After hopping in the truck I pushed the open button for the shop door behind me. I started the truck, checked both outside rearview mirrors, and began backing up.....the truck moved about 3 feet and came to an abrupt stop....I checked the emergency brake....gave it some gas and let out the clutch...the backend of the truck suddenly went up in the air about a foot! I got out of the cab and walked around the back to find out what had stopped my progress...It was a City of Spring Valley Squad Car! Turns out the Police Chief had dropped his car off for a service appointment that morning and had pulled it straight in front of the overhead door I was backing out of...the car was parked so close to the door that I couldn't see it in the rearview mirrors of the flat bed! You should have seen it...the wheel lift of the truck had embedded itself quite a ways into the hood of the Police Car...best thing was...I caused even more damage when I gave it more gas thinking it was the emergency brake hanging up! Luckily, the Chief of Police and I had a good relationship and he was very understanding about the accident. More to come....
The Sr. Tech in my family's Ford Dealership was cleaning injectors on a customer's 1993 F150. I was filling in for our Parts Manager the day the following accident ocourred. We had a fuel injection system that you would install a can of pressurized cleaning fluid into the Injector fuel supply line and run the vehicle on untill it ran out of cleaner. As it ran the tech had to keep the engine running by keeping the RPMs up. On the truck he was working on, the line was hooked up toward the back of the engine. The Tech was about half way through the cleaning procedure when I noticed it losing RPMs and stalling out. At the same time I heard the sound of cumbustion starting...and not the kind that is internal! The line from the pressurized cannister to the injector supply line had broken and was spraying the highly flammible fluid down the back of the engine, onto the hot exhaust and the floor under the truck. The fluid that had sprayed under the truck ignited and the fire was still being supplied with fuel from the container. In no time it looked like the truck was parked on top off a giant fire pit! Luckily, we had fire extinguishers all over the shop. It took 3 of us hosing it down to get the flames out. When the Fire Department arrived all they had to do was put a couple of big fans in the door ways to get rid of the smoke. Thank god there were no injuries and the damage was contained to the truck and a scorched concrete floor! The story does end up with a happy ending...First I called the customer to tell him his truck was done...Well Done! It was an older truck that he had been thinking of trading in, and he had his eyes on a Mazda B4000 (nee Ford Ranger) that had been on our lot for about a year. After the insurance claim was paid and I gave him a heck of a deal on the Mazda, everyone was Happy. The End. More to Come....
I was working in a Chevrolet/Cadillac dealership in the body shop,We were allowed to smoke by the wash rack or outside the wash rack door,One day I walked through the service department to the smoking area and as soon as I got out the door I heard a large explosion and the ALL the doors in the building opened. A mechanic working on a Fleetwood had just finished changing the oil and fuel filter and had fired up a torch to cut off the muffler anf had a spark fall into the oil drain which was also used for fuel filters. The explosion blew the bottom of the oil drain out and caused it to fly up and hit the bottom of the car bowing the floorpan up and injuring the mechanic pretty badly.The car in the next stall had the side completely with oil with an outline of the mechanic working on it clean because the mechanic had "masked" it.
I went to work at a caddy dealer outta high school. I worked in service center car clean up area. When ever a car would come in for service work it would get a courtesy wash and vacumn. That was my job and i earned the nickname "Shine" , saleman would have me clean new or used cars before sales...always throwing me a few bucks on the side. The older caddy owners would toss me nice tips too. One day i was in a hurry and armor alled an older womans gas pedel and brake pedel. She about wrecked leaving the dealership....i was a 19 year old kid, the owner of the dealership climbned my ass like nobody had ever done. Talk about a valubale lesson in work and responsabilty......... Later i went to work in a Chevy dealer body shop, when a customer brought in his almost new corvette for warrenty paint work. It was assigned to another painters helper, the car was paked in his stall got his DA sander out and went to work on the roof. Well when he got in the car an looked up he noticed it was a t top car! Yep he had roached a brand new pair of t tops. Another Valuable lesson i learned, as i may have done the samething...... he was sick when he had to tell the body shop manager! will have to think of more, as i know i got them......
I once worked as a autoglass installer for a bodyshop at a Olds dealership. This was on the northside of Milwaukee. One day a recently purchased car (maybe a few months old) came in on a flatbed truck. The car had all the windows smashed out, tires slashed, misc. body dents, and smashed out headlights, tail lights. The owner, a woman, claimed her car was stolen and when she found the car (yes, she somehow found it) in its present condition. She then exclaimed that "the car is totaled" and therefore, she is removed from any responsibility for the car, including, she made apparent, "paying for it". The owner of the dealership made us aware that she had already failed to make the second payment on the car, that we're going to fix it and give it back to her. Luckily, the car still had insurance coverage (but I wouldn't doubt that there was a high deductible). Upon notice what was going to happen, she became enraged and threatened to call the NAACP on us, claiming that the car was totaled and unfixable; that we were doing something criminal. It was totally stupid, she orchestrating an amateurish botch job of wrecking her own car, lying that it was stolen and then raising hell. What a joke, as we laughed about it and gleefully fixed the car, then gave it back to her.
During my summer vacations when I was in college, a buddy and I used to drive around checking out dealer inventories, just to see what was out there. In the summer of '81 or so, we were driving by a VW dealer and spotted a '73 Firebird on the lot, so we swung in to look at it. A salesman came out, rubbing his hands together obviously thinking he had a couple guppies on his hands. With his slimy approach, I decided to give him a run rather than the standard "I'm a poor college student that likes cars but isn't buying, so don't waste your time with me." I ask how much the car is and get a reply of "We were asking $3495 for it but it's on sale, today only, for $2995!" I ask for a test drive and the guy can't go to get the plate and keys fast enough. While he's gone, I do a quick look and see the car is at best a 20 footer. The salesman returns and off the three of us go (buddy in the back seat). I start off driving normally but ask the salesman if there's a curvy road around so I can see how it handles. The salesman decides we've been out long enough and tells me to head back to the dealer instead, Happily for me, he tells me this right near a large high school parking lot, so I pull in to turn around and stage an impromptu gymkhana, throwing the car (and the salesman) around pretty severely. I check the rear-view mirror and my buddy is grinning from ear to ear. We get back on the road and come to a stoplight, where I slide the floor shifter down into first gear. As I sit waiting for the light to change, I notice the salesman slide the shifter back up to drive. I look over at him and ask why he did that and he says that you shouldn't start off in first gear because it will blow the rear end. HUH?!!!! I check the rear-view mirror again and my buddy is now stifling laughter. We get back to the dealer and the salesman goes for the close. In the mean time, I start looking the car over closely and start seeing signs that it's had some hack body work. I close the driver's door and the lower half of the door skin is actually over-lapping the rear quarter- there is no door gap, at all! I point this out and the salesman says their body shop can adjust that. I ask if the metallic brown paint is original and he says it is, so I ask him why there's a masking line along the bottom of the accent stripe on the fender and door. While he's trying to come up with a plausible answer, I tell him there's one way to see if there's been a repaint... body shops often forget to put flex agent in the paint when they reshoot the rubber front bumper. I walk to the front of the car with the salesman in tow and push down on the nose and the paint spiderwebs. As his jaw drops, I take my hand and wipe the webbed paint off. "See what I mean?" I ask. As he stands at the front completely dumbfounded, I walk to the back and start knocking on the rear quarters. "What are you doing now?" he asked. "Checking for bondo," I reply, just as my raps are turning into thuds. "Oh, there's no bondo in this car," he says as I reach under the bottom lip and stick my finger into something wet and mushy. I reach ing a little deeper and start pulling out the substance, which turns out to be wet newspaper! They had packed the rot with the Sunday comics, spread bondo over the mess, smoothed it and shot it. As I start dropping wads of wet paper on the ground, my buddy turns and heads for my car. The salesman stands there with his jaw on the ground as I stand up and tell him there's no way I'd buy this piece of crap. When last I saw him, the salesman was walking back to the showroom, shaking his head and muttering to himself. When I was walking to my car, I noticed it was shaking but I can't see my buddy. I get to the door, look in and I see him, with the passenger's seat reclined, laughing hysterically to the point of actually crying! He wasn't able to stop for about 5 minutes after we had driven off the lot!
I worked at a Dodge Jeep Chrysler Mitsubishi dealer for a few years. One of the fellas dropped a Ford Ranger off the lift. Another guy (every year we'd put a plow on a new truck and plow the lot with the demo) didn't see a new PT Cruiser and pretty much cut it in half.I'll tell you something about leased cars.Don't buy one.Who knows what the previous owners did.Picture this,10 cars,trucks or Jeeps packed behind a wall of snow 4-5 feet high when the carrier shows up.It's your job to get these things out.It usually involved cold starts,putting it in gear and hitting the rev limiter.The cars that didn't make it out were usually hooked to a 4x4 that did and jerked silly until they were free.I only worked there for 2 years,but my favorite was the time a guy tried to save a bit of time by welding a part that shoulda been replaced.This clown had bought some little 110 flux core MIG for like $79 at Harbor Freight or whatever.It was seat track slider that broke,and his idea was to just put a few tacks on it and be done.What he didn't count on was the spatter burning into the foam and fabric.Just as the customer returns from lunch,the service manager has to explain why her our shop is smoking and why she can't drive her minivan home today.OH!!!!Just remembered another story. Weird as hell.Older lady brings her car in saying it's making squeeling noises. Tech pulls it in.Hears it.Can't figure it out.Gets another tech.Another tech.Another tech.We're all in there with our lights looking in,around,under and everywhere on this car listening to what anybody could only describe as a scream. Cars don't scream.Ever.The car is there for a few hours total.The car only screams when the motor warms up,then it quits.Chris notices a bit of fur down around the exhaust area.It was a baby groundhog about the size of a few month old kitten,about 5 pounds or so,standing on the exhaust pipe but caught between the pipe and firewall.We freed him up and he took off across the lot good as new it seemed.No shit.
In 95 or 96 I was working at the local GMC dealer. PDIed a 2500 diesel special order truck. The new proud owner was a the dealership waiting, thanks to a over anxious salesman. Took the truck out to calibrate the compass, roadtest and get some fuel.As I am sitting waiting to turn back in, I hear a hopping squealing sound, in the rear view I see a F700 dump truck with a full load of shingles hopping toward me. I floored the 2500 and smoked it on out of there. I didnt let off for nearly a 1\2 mile. The new owner nearly had a fit. One of the salesmen said he wished I could have seen the look on the old guys face. The dude in the dumper grabbed another gear and kept going.
I basiclly grew up on a used car lot in S. Dallas in the 70's -80"s.....all I can say is it shaped my life and some people would not believe the things I saw.....
5:00 PM, Thanksgiving eve at the Chevy dealership autumn of 1968. I'm there for only 6 months, just a lowly FNG lot man. I ranked lower than the piano player in a whore house so I got all the hand down bad jobs. All the employees are lined up from the front of the showroom, thru 2 sets of doors and down the hall into the parts department. (About 40 or 50 people). The owner and general manager are handing every employee a good size turkey as they pass thru the line. I'm almost next, cant wait to get out and get home. Suddenly the comptroller and owner signal me out of the line and tell me a customer's new car wont be ready for him tonight and I must drive the fellow home to Plymouth, down close to CAPE COD. In light traffic thats close to two and a half hours on a good night. I whine a little, then hesitate. So the owner says they'll save a turkey for me (okay....) and they'll give me the first Z28 we got in for the '69 model run to use as a night run. (OKAY!) The Z is drop dead gourgeous! Rally green, black buckets, 4 speed, chambered exhaust, wicked noisy solid lifters, deep gears and an 8 track. Hey, I'm just a 20 year old punk car jockey here feeling like I own the joint now. Off Mr.Cranky Customer and I go granny shifting 'till I'm outta sight of the show room, thinking how I'm going to punish this bitch, get the dude home quick and joy ride 'till the cows come home. Two miles up the road and I spin onto the highway to the Cape. HERE WE GO NOW for about 10 feet and I'm climbing onto the brake pedal as hard as my foot and leg can reach. All I can see ahead of me is bright red brake lights for the next 120 miles. I never got the bitch over 20 mph, NEVER ! Three plus hours later I drop Mr. Grouchy Customer in Plymouth spin the Z around, tweak up the 8 track and now I'm going to break the sound barrier I'm hoping. WRONG! More traffic to contend with. This time I get her up to a death defying 25 mph, have to take numerous detours and arrive back (more like crawl back to the dealership) at around 10:00 PM. As I idle into the front yard I see the owner and general mgr. angrily staring back at me, pissed that they had to wait so late for my return. "How'd the car run Jim?" they asked. "It got great brakes and a stiff clutch." They presented me with my turkey on the way into the showroom. WTF, it was the size of a tiny parakeet. The bastards must of run short and gone to the back yard and robbed something from a bird's nest. When I presented it to my mom after I got home late that night she laughed at me and said "What do you want me to do with this table scrap?" She then took direct aim toward the trash barrell and launched it. New Z28 I never got into 3rd gear with all night, a dead parakeet to say thanks with..........Double WTF!
My dad ordered a new 78 Corvette Indy Pace car from Bob Brown Chevy in Des Moines, Iowa. The way he tells the story is that they didn't want him to put any money down on the order, but he knew better. He figured that they would sell the vette to the highest bidder over sticker when it came in because they were so hot. So dad figured he better put a deposit of $500 to ensure the car would make it to him. Car comes in, and the dealer's son wants it, so when my dad calls to see if its in, they tell him they can't sell him the car and will refund the deposit. Long story short, my dad sues Bob Brown Chevy. The Des Moines Register newspaper gets a hold of the story and it hits the fan.. bad PR for the dealership. Dad gets the car... I have the newspaper clippings as well as the receipt for the deposit.
Can't leave well enough alone, you were a datsun dealer. At least you didn't sell hondas. Plus I have no real problem with hondas, just the idea that you can do work enough to a car to brag about it by putting a mufler and a spoiler on it. Recently, I went to a dealership that has some old cars, shocker! So as I am cruising around the lot looking for a car, I saw this one couple walk in and talk to the same sales guy for about 30 minutes. Well when all is said and done, the sales guy gives them the keys for a little test drive, but he is very hesitant. Too bad because when they came back (a couple of hours later, I was there, left and came back) the car came back on a tow truck and the couple in question snuck off to their car BEFORE the guy dropped the car off. The car in question, a custom 1959 Chevy Impala. He wrapped the custom, $15,000 engine around a tree. I wanted to hit the guy, can't even imagine how the owner felt.
olds dealer took in a peterbuilt tractor in trade, but no one knew how to drive it except this one jackhole saleman, "used to be a trucker" eager to show his skills he pulls the truck into the service drive, under a 10ft metal cover....rips the exhaust stacks right off the thing in front of most of the service dept employee's, i can still see the look on his face
40 years in GM dealerships, a lot of stories. Back in 72, I was a longhair gearfreak hippie working in the parts department. We had a service manager that thought he was God's gift to women. He was in his mid 30's, I was 20. Big differende Anyway, a young lady comes in, my age, dressed professionally, heels, and a knockout. Well, she saw me, came up and said hi, she was a friend's wife's neighbor. Anyway, she was dropping her car off and remarked how the service manager was a leering a**hole. Told her to play it up and I would give her a ride home. Play it up, to the top she did. What dirty looks I got from him. So, about a month or so later, another young lady came in to drop her car off before closing. Same approximate age. The pay phone was next to the parts window, obviously she was having a problem getting a ride home. I politely offered her a ride, she thanked me but said that she did not want to be a bother and it was very nice of me. I told her it was no big deal, even though she lived in the opposite direction. When she told me what street she lived on, turns out that she lived just down the block from the previously mentioned friend's wife's parents, and the other lady that I gave a ride the month before. And that she slightly knew both of them, this put her at ease also. Well, Mr. Stunning (my nickname for the manager) then approached her and generously offered her a ride, which she declined. She said that a man in the parts department offered her a ride. Mr. Stunning then asks her if it was Tom, the blonde haired guy that also worked in parts. Clean cut, neat dresser. She said, no it was Joe, the hippie looking guy. Of all the dirty looks I have ever received, this was the classic. Through his pea brain the WTF is going on here wondering what I have that he doesn't. Besides being a gentleman that I was, opening the door for the lady, both at the dealership and at her home. And, no, I didn't ask her for a date, even though I would have loved to. I could not lower myself to the service manager's level. Never said I had a lot of class, just enough to get by. Or, the time at another dealership a service writer, not the sharpest crayon in the box wrote up a recheck for a driveability problem, the car ran on after shutoff. How he wrote it up was, "Recheck car, still runs after recent tuneup". I'll remember more stories later on.
i worked at a ford dealer in the late 60s. i almost bought a new boss 302. couldn't afford the 50.00 a month payment.
OK! Heres one! A friend of mine worked at a local Dodge dealer and had tried to get his brother-inlaw a job moving cars around the lot and to the different shops. They hired another guys 17yr. old son instead. On his first day, a couple of minutes after he started, they told him to take a new Dodge Ram 4x4 around to the service bay. He cut the corner too close and caught the truck on the building scraping the entire side, panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake!. Plowed into a new Jeep wagon. The truck some how went into and up over the hood and fender almost rolled the truck!. He did over $18,000 damage in just that few minutes. Needless to say he his first mintues on the job were his LAST!! My friend had a good laugh when telling his brother-inlaw about it!!. Mel
I have one about you dealers driving a "demo" car to lunch My wife(girlfriend at the time) was going to work about the time everyone was going to lunch and was driving down a side street to avoid traffic when a new mustang rips across infront of her and they hit head on.......come to find out a bunch of salesmen jump in a new mustang to go eat lunch and then cut down the side street to see how much power it has and the idiot could drive and hit my wife........Needless to say the dealership paid for EVEYTHING and my wife got a GREAT DEAL on a car from there lot at I kid you not a 50% discount for not taking the dealer to the cleaners in court...I still wish she had sued instead os settling she now has bad neck pains because of the crash
This is the story the service manager at the dealership would have been telling his fellow employees about me. I bought a new car in 1995. At about 30,000 miles I put new premium brakes on it myself. (easier than messing with the dealer) At 34,000 miles (under warranty) the coil pack started missfiring. I had my wife and her girlfriend drop the car off early in the day for repair. At 2 PM my wife calls me at work crying, saying the dealer told her the car needed brakes and it would be $600. Also it was their policy to do "all of the work or nothing" I left work and drove to the dealership. I tell the service manager I want to see the brake problem on the car. He takes me out to the service bay and shows me the problem.... The front brakes were worn out. BUT he was showing me somebody else's car. I wanted to punch him in the nose for being a liar... Instead of going to jail for assault, I figured I'll grab him by the necktie he was wearing and give him a couple jerks since he was jerking me around. Only problem was somebody had been there before me.... He was wearing a clip-on tie.
A good customer of mine, who bought 2 late model Buick's from me, sent the girlfriend who lived with him, down to our family's used car lot where she bought a late model Maverick Grabber from me. This was in the early 70's Although she was spoken for and she had 2 very young kids she was a babe. I guess today we would say a MILF. Nonetheless she was "hot" but seeing's where he owned a local tavern, was a body builder and sent me a lot of business and the fact I was newly married to my beautiful wife I kept my eyes off of his girl Elaine. About 2 weeks go by and Elaine pulls the Grabber into our building and while explaining to me how bored and restless she is, she asks me to fix a rattle under her dashboard for her. For Elaine, I'd do anything for her including jumping naked thru a flaming hoop. She's behind the wheel pointing with her sexy finger to the area where this supposed rattle is. I ask Elaine to jump out of the car so I'll have more room to move under the dashboard toward her driver's side. She says no, she'd rather sit there and watch me work. "Huh, that's odd Elaine I cant seem to hear or see anything loose under here". Elaine Say's she'll move over closer to the drivers door for me to see better so her right leg is now up on the transmission hump and her left foot is practically up on the dashboard. Do you see where this is leading too yet? Sure enough as I stare back toward her lovely big brown eyes I see she is wearing no u@#$%&*wear I'm too faithful to my best customers and way in love with my new bride so I finish up the rattle chase, refuse any tip she offered me, and sent her on her merry(?) way. Was I good or bad or just naive?
You should have eatin that!!!!! You sicko's i meant the bill of the damage!!!!!!!!!! Knuck from indiana.
OK, Lowcat, since no one asked... what's the story on the 60-61 vette? Yes, I realize it's fairly self explanatory, but now I'm more curious since that may be my favorite vette of all. It ain't back in the day as evidenced by all the modern day machinery in the photo...
About 1990, I am a 16 yr old car ported at the local Ford dealer. First week on the job and there was an 88 5.0 LX notchback 5 spd on the used lot....figured I better wash that one up again now that I am the only guy working in the shop at this time of night. Big back lot and I took the long way back around. Being the experienced driver that I am at 16, I put the pedal down and started grabbin gears. Didnt notice the big lot drain with ALOT of pitch in the pavement around it about halfway up the aisle. So....now I am sideways doin about 60 in between two rows of new Fords. The mustang stayed sideways and slid to a stop right in front of the door that I was pulling in. I proceeded to pull in clean it up like I knew what i was doing. No idea how I didnt wreck a pile of new metal that night...
The Jalopy Journal
