CARS OFF THE SHELF | 2005-11-17
It was one the rare occasions when I was in a bar, imbibing with my usual moderation. I forget exactly who I was with. All I remember is that I was somewhat embarrassed at how she was hitting the liquor.
She was so drunk she looked blurred.
There were some guys in coats and ties at one table and one of them bought a round of "free" drinks for everybody, including me and my blurry girlfriend. He was celebrating the fact that he had just "won" a car dealership.
By "won" I mean that he had bid highest among a group of people bidding big money for that dealership.
That's why I put the quotes around the "free" drink I got from him.
Guess who paid for the high bid he was able to make? Well, I have bought a number of new cars in my life, and the people who buy new cars are the ones who paid for his bid, plus the profit he made on it.
I figure, very conservatively, that that drink cost me twenty or thirty thousand dollars.
I also had to pay for the guy who works for him. You know how it is when you buy a new car. The dealer sits down with you and gives you such a deal on the car, such a deal as you never saw before in your life.
It's less than the factory cost. The dealership will lose money on it. He is giving up his commission. His family will just have to go hungry this week.
Then he goes to "clear" this money-losing deal with his supervisor. You can see through the glass as he breaks the awful news to his boss.
The boss's reaction for your benefit depends on the price of the car you are buying. If it is a luxury model, he looks stunned and sorrowful. For a super-luxury car he turns pale and has to sit down.
When it comes to cars that sell for over a hundred grand they have a special ambulance that comes in, red lights flashing, into which he gets carried, clutching his chest.
For the cars I bought, he just nodded.
So you pay for the dealership, the salesman who is standing around most of the day and clears his shirt-losing deals with the manager, overhead, the works.
Plus profits on all that.
One company is experimenting with a technique that takes all the drama out of this. They are selling cars just like you buy anythig else, off the shelf.
You would find it hard to have a life if you haggled over everything you bought in a store. The entire personnel of WalMart would have to take acting lessons and you would have to pay for them.
If this experiment is succcessful, the price of cars will drop like a rock.