Car Sales People

So the SacTownGuy vacillates between a Porsche 911 and an economy car like a Hybrid. Sometimes the thoughts change from minute to minute but usually just day by day. Today is a "practical day." Being a practical day we went to the Toyota dealer here in RoseTown to check out the Camry's since I already knew they were sold out of Prius'. I do enjoy the car sales experience and today was no different.

It was about 9:30 on Sunday morning and the sharks were ready! They had about 6 or 7 guys lined up and before Kitty Kat had even parked the car a dude was there to greet us... or should I say to greet ME. He was a middle eastern gentleman, working on his English language skills, nice but not good about including the female in the conversation about such a manly purchase like a new car. You know I joke because Kitty Kat is very involved in such decisions and a sales guy that doesn't include her is likely to not sell a car to us. I forgot his name but it was something like Kylem so we will go with that....

Kylem asked what we wanted and I told him I wanted to see a Camry and a Camry hybrid. I wanted to check out the trunks, see what they have in stock, etc.... He showed us a few regular Camry's. I then asked to see a Camry Hybrid (or TCH to those in the know). He kept dodging my request to see a TCH. At least twice he showed me with his hands how big the trunk was on the TCH. I told him I needed to SEE the actual car to really know how big the trunk is. His drawing a line in the regular Camry trunk wasn't doing it. He finally acknowledged they only had one in stock but it was out getting retrofitted with some crap (tint, big wheels, etc...). Turned out they had 50 plus regular Camry and zero hybrids to show me. As you can imagine they were PUSHING the regular Camry's.

Finally Kylem turned us over to Jessie. Oh Jessie. Oh Jessie my boy. The SacTownGuy is a straight shooter, relatively intelligent and really not into being lied to. Jessie went to used car sales 101, 201 and probably has a masters degree on the subject. WOW! He started by asking why I wanted a hybrid, was it for the gas mileage? I said that was one of the reasons. He then went into his pre-arranged sales pitch about how great the gas mileage is on the regular Camry. I explained that the window stickers shows the Hybrid at 33/34 (city and highway) and the regular Camry at 19-21/29-31. He assured me that in the real world his customers, even with the 6 cylinder got only about 4 MPG less with the regular than the Hybrid. I was ready to walk out and just about did. However, I was on a fact finding mission today so I didn't walk. However, I made the decision at that moment that I would NOT buy a car from Jessie no matter what! (Jessie- if you read this remember this next time you want to blatantly lie to a customer).

Oh ya, my favorite as Jess reached into his pocket for his cell phone, "if you don't believe me let's call my parents... they have a 6 cylinder Solara, same engine as the Camry, and they get 35 MPG." Look Jess, asking the parents of a sales guy for unbiased information would be like calling my grandma when I am feeling low self esteem. Seriously, if you feel down call your grandma and she will tell you that you are the greatest person in the history of civilization and she isn't biased you can trust her opinion!

Ok, slick Jess, let me let you redeem yourself. I confirm that he must be talking about the 4 cyl Camry being 4 MPG different than the Hybrid. You know, I was feeling generous so gave him an out. NOPE. Jessie wouldn't take it but instead stuck with his original hypothesis. I think that's when he told me I could call his mom if I didn't believe him.

That's also about the time he suggested we had a lack of trust between us. You think so Jessie? Why would you think that... because you LIED TO ME AND THEN KEPT ON LYING!?

They had ZERO Prius' or Camry Hybrids so they kept pumping the regular Camry's. You know the old story (which I have repeated many times - which is less applicable now) about how much more the Hybrid costs so gas would have to be really expensive to break even, yada, yada, yada.... Well, as I explained to Jessie, gas MIGHT go to $6, $7 or $10 per gallon. I just don't know. It's hard to imagine it going much below $4 per gallon right now and I certainly think sub three dollars is a think of the past.

Jessie kept up his economic analysis and the answer was always the same... 6 cyl Camry was best!

You know you though pi equals 3.14 but in reality pi equals 6 cyl Camry.

I then suggested I would check the Nissan Altima Hybrid since they appeared to have a lot in stock on-line. Jessie did not realize that I knew that the Altima uses the Toyota hybrid engine and even says "TOYOTA" on the top of the engine block. He went into his bashing of Nissan, how they don't know hybrids like Toyota, could be just like Honda with the Accord hybrid that only lasted two years, etc.... I kept to myself the fact that I knew they had the same engine. He just kept rambling....

In the end the big issue is not gas mileage but trunk space. The trunk space difference is 14.5 v. 10.6 which is a pretty major difference. Thus you may just see the SacTownGuy rolling a non-hybrid Camry, or a hybrid, or a 911... or maybe still rolling the G-35. We shall see....

peace out.