UNDER any circumstances I hate buying cars. You may enjoy being massaged over vending machine coffee by an earnest young man from an executive housing estate. You may welcome an invitation to join the gold card club entitling you to free sex and a courtesy car should it so much as rain. But only if you live within five inches of the forecourt. You may even think the whole, costly, fandango is justified by the nice bunch of Tesco flowers for the little lady.
I don’t.
It’s a money thing. From the moment I step into a showroom I’m looking for highly trained wallet snipers to pop up from behind a well polished receptionist and machine gun my family’s fortunes to death.
You see, my idea of what constitutes a fair price for a jam jar would have the car retail industry starving to death in the gutter. Dealer principals, as they are known, would be downsizing to cardboard boxes and salesmen forced to go without strong aftershave.
The full horror of buying a car is only exceeded by the torment of selling one.
Not that trade-in rigmarole: “Look mate, no one is really interested in those Datsun Magimixes but throw in the wife and a daughter and it’s worth a monkey.�
“Five hundred quid?�
“No, a small simian.�
No, the sort of selling that has me dribbling in the corner is through those picture advert magazines like Auto Robber and Car Buyer’s Regret.
To start with the picture of your family hatchback will have been replaced by one of a small trawler which apparently has covered over 220,000 miles under the pilotage of one lazy owner.
Then there are the punters who have been advised by the same magazine to haggle. Which they think is the same as bartering and so have come equipped with a supply of ripe mangoes and three goats.
Strangely everyone who answers these adverts is a time- served MOT inspector, able to spot loose nuts two houses away yet owning a vehicle that couldn’t get a ticket for a bingo night.
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »