Big day yesterday. We bought a new car — our first in twelve years. It’s a Toyota Camry LE, my wife’s choice. Looks pretty nice. If I’m a good boy she might let me drive it.
The twelve-year-old car was a ‘97 Chevy Malibu. The Toyota people gave us $1,000 on a trade-in for it as part of the deal. We were only too glad to get rid of it. It’s been nothing but trouble. We’ve been saying to each other for years: “No more Big Three cars!” Hence the trip to our local Toyota dealer.
So far as GM is concerned, “no more” is redundant. Where would you even buy one? On the way to the Toyota dealer we passed Pape Chevrolet, where we’d bought the Malibu. The place is empty and derelict. I stopped to take a picture. It looks like a little patch of Detroit in Long Island. Which, of course, figuratively speaking, is what it is.
There is — was — another GM dealership on the way to Toyota. I took a picture of that, too. (The new showroom they’re boasting of is an old showroom, consolidated.) A melancholy touch here is that when they locked the place up and left, they forgot to take down the flags on the street fixtures out front. The flags are still there, just barely.
Yeah, yeah, I know, creative destruction. My first ever American car was a Chevy, though, and I’m sorry to see the firm in such straits. What was that TV ad that used to run in the seventies? “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet …”
The Toyota dealership, when we got there, was doing a roaring trade. There’s a recession on? You’d never know it. They didn’t have enough salespeople to handle the customers. And this was a Tuesday afternoon, not even a weekend.
Our particular case wasn’t helped by Mrs. D being Chinese. Salespeople hate Chinese customers. Quite right, too. Mrs. D will haggle the hair off your head. And she’s not even from Shanghai — they are totally the worst. We have a Shanghainese friend who went to buy a car some years ago. He drove the sales force to such distraction, they actually threw him out. He talked his way back in, because, as he explained: “When they threw me out, then I knew I’d found their price!” Mrs. D isn’t that relentless, but she did drive one of the reps out of his courtesy zone. “Lady, if you don’t want the car, don’t buy it.”
I just sit there trying to look affable while this goes on. Heck, I am affable. I can’t haggle at all. Me: “What’s the sticker price on this model?” Sales rep: “Twenty-five thousand.” Me: “Can you take a regular check?” With Mrs. D it goes more like this:
She: What’s the sticker price on this model?
Rep: Twenty-five thousand.
She: You can’t be serious! It’s just a family sedan.
Rep: Yeah, but see, it’s got …
She: Why are you quoting me a luxury-car price for a plain family sedan? I don’t understand.
Rep: Lady, this is the best-selling family car in America. Look, it has …
She: Twenty-five thousand? Ridiculous! Come on, you can give me a better price than that.
Rep: Well, there might be some leeway. I’ll have to …
She: How about eighteen? I think eighteen’s fair, don’t you?
Rep (laughing nervously): Lady, there’s absolutely no way I could go down to eighteen …
She: Oh, so you can go down! …
We left the Malibu with them, with no parting regrets at all, and drove home savoring the new-car smell. I know, I know, our Camry was made in the U.S.A. too. (Here, I guess.) I couldn’t keep the Buchananish regrets altogether at bay though. The U.S.A. used to be a country full of factories where stuff was made, and whose workers could earn enough to support a family. Now what have we got? Lawyers. Chief Diversity Officers. “Community organizers.” So far I don’t like the 21st century very much. Aah, stop bitching, Derb. You got a new car for the missus, didn’t you?