Demo Rides

Probably the most dangerous thing a Car Man does in the course of doing business is going on a demo ride. Everyone who’s been in the business for a while can tell you a harrowing story of a test drive gone wrong. If you haven’t done so, please read my two-part blog entry called “My Ride With Rudy” for a prime example.

Please excuse me if I repeat myself here. I might have mentioned a few of the points I’m going to make before, but they are scattered over 50,000 + words of writing, and I’m too lazy to figure out what I’ve said and what I haven’t!

All Car Men know that a proper demo ride is of prime importance to a successful sale. Not only is it important to build up a buying ether for the car you’re trying to sell, it’s the perfect time to ask your customer’s a few qualifying questions while his guard is down. Since my job is to entertain you, not train you, I won’t go any further with this, but it’s something that has to be stated before we get to the fun stuff.

Back at the beginning of my automotive career (a time when dinosaurs still roamed the earth) goin on a demo drive could be challenging. We’re spoiled today. Most cars run good right off the bat, especially new ones. One Ford Focus drives exactly like another one, but that wasn’t true when I was a kid.

Picture this: I have just taken my up into the back lot of Hayward Ford looking for the perfect LTD to put under his ass. There they are, fifty of them lined up in a row all shiny and new. But here’s my problem: each one drives a little differently than the other. If you drove off in a car and it didn’t run properly, you couldn’t let your customer drive it. No way! You’d have turn around and get another one!

On top of that every car seemed to have something wrong with it. Most commonly it was a squeak or rattle, but anything could happen when you were demoing an early 70’s Ford. How would you like to deal with that?

A case can be made that any test drive that ends with you still being alive is a successful one. Every once in a while a guy will go out out on a demo and end up dead in a trunk. There’s nothing like looking down the barrel of a gun to make you feel that maybe you should have gotten a job at the post office.

I've been pretty lucky with demo rides. No one has ever pulled a gun on me, and as you can tell, I’m not dead. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had my share of nuts. More than once I’ve demanded that someone pull over because they we’re driving like a crazy person.

When I was a sales manager, I had a salesman who went on a test drive and came back without his customer. He was white as a sheet when he told me his story that is saying a lot since the salesman was black. He told me that once his customer got behind the wheel, he started driving at speeds in excess of 100 MPH, weaving in and out of traffic for miles down the highway. Somehow the salesman got the goof to pull over to the side of the road, and when they changed seats, he locked the customer out and left him there—about ten miles from the dealership!

I’ve had test drives that were nothing more than an idiot trying to catch a ride home. This happened to me a couple of times when I was young. A customer appears on the lot, you take him for a ride. The customer says he wants to show the car to his wife; let’s drive to his house. Once you get there he tells you he’s got to think things over, and no thanks, you doesn’t need a ride back to the dealership!

Asshole.

I once went on a test drive in a Ford Econoline Van. We went to his house to get his trade. As he pulled up he side-swiped his own car with the new one! The guy ended up buying that van and having to get it fixed!

As an ending to this particular scribe, I want to tell you another one of my demo ride screw ups. This isn’t as good as my ride with the late Rudy Henderson, but its close.

One dark winter night in 1994 I was working at Hayward Nissan in Hayward, California. About 7:00 in the evening I uped a young African-American female who came onto the lot on foot. After looking around for a couple of minutes she asked me if she could drive a used Pathfinder we had on the lot. Unlike the ride with Rudy, I made a copy of her driver’s license and left it with the desk. We were good to go—or so I thought...

Now a little geography lesson will be necessary here. Hayward lies on the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay south of Oakland. I used to take customers on a demo route that went east towards the San Mateo Bridge. Along the way the road crossed over Highway 80, the north/south corridor that heads toward Oakland. On my route we would stay eastbound until just before the toll-booth. At this point we’d turn around and go back.

Things started off well with the customer. After a brief presentation we started off toward the bridge with her behind the wheel. But when we reached the point where our route crossed Highway 80, she suddenly veered onto the northbound on ramp going toward Oakland. I was a little ticked off. In my experience if a customer won’t stick to your prescribed demo route, you’ll probably have other problems with your deal. But I gave her the benefit of the doubt. She’d made a mistake, that’s all, I assured myself. I asked her to take the next exit so we could turn around and go back. But instead of exiting she shot into the fast lane and continued north.

I asked her where she was going. She said nothing. She just starred straight ahead and drove. I became extremely nervous. Was she trying to hijack me, or did she just want a ride home? One thing for sure, I didn’t want this lady taking me into the heart of East Oakland in the dark. It was a good place to get killed.

Exits passed by. We were now in San Leandro, the next city up the highway on the way to Oakland. I didn’t know what to do. She was going seventy, so like it or not she was in charge. All my demands for her to get off the freeway were met with deaf ears. This was in the days before cell phones so there was no way to call for help. What the hell was I going to do?

Eventually she exited the freeway just south of Oakland. She blew passed the stop light at the end of the exit. At this point I started to yell at her to stop the damn truck! About four or five blocks later, she turned right, got caught in traffic, and was forced to stop at a light. I didn’t hesitate. I reached down, slammed the transmission into park, and grabbed the key out of the ignition. The lady looked at me with a decidedly pissed off expression on her face, opened up her door, and ran off into the night.

Now who said selling cars was boring?


Talk to you later,


David