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I've always considered auto racing's marketing cliche of "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" a load of bull.
Seriously -- who stays glued to the end of a TV race, while screaming out to the missus, "Hold on, Martha! They're in the final turn ... and it's Jimmie Johnson! Hot dog, we're heading straight to the Ford lot first thing in the mornin'!."
MARTHA: "Johnson drives a Chevy, Herb."
HERB: "Whatever."
If auto makers want me to show up on their lots to test drive their cars, they need to stop sinking all that money into signage on the raceway and start sinking actual money into my pocket.
And, lucky for me: I'm back on their list!
In my mailbox this week was the sweetest junk mail on the planet: An offer from a car dealership for a $50 gift card to take one of their vehicles for a test drive.
About five years ago, there was a span where I would get one or two of those "we'll pay you to test drive us" offers a month. In exchange of an hour of my time, I sped away with what in my mind was a free coupon for the latest Simpsons DVD box set.
In these hard economic times, I know to scramble on an offer for free entertainment when I see it. The main difference is where the $50 gift card will go. No, it won't be for the Lost: Season 4 DVDs (besides, ABC lets you stream every episode in HD for free; I'll bet the people who sell the DVDs love that as much as Hurley loves Sawyer's fat jokes). At $4 a gallon for gas, 50 free donuts are going straight into the gas tanks of the cars I do own faster than Hurley on an Apollo chocolate bar (great, now I just made a cheap fat joke. Someone please delete that before it gets in print).
So this week, I can pretend I'm an automotive writer. You can pretend that I know the difference between a timing belt and a roll of licorice.
That reminds me: Do porno magazines still publish test drive reviews? That always fascinated me. You've got a 200-page magazine of pure filth, and around pages 142 and 143 you can find a straight-faced review of a luxury car. I've always wondered if those reviewers knew where it was their stories were ending up. I can completely envision some serious, seasoned freelance journalist who's canvassing Europe, he drives the latest Mercedes coup down the Autobahn, then files the review back to the State. All he knows is that eventually he gets a check that clears. He has no idea his critique appears right after a pictorial of two gals, a guy and 10 quarts of Quaker State in a poorly lit lube center.
And we're off
• The first thing to know about the "give me a gift card for test driving your car" game is that the salesmen want nothing to do with you. You are a drain on their resources. They'd rather see someone walk in with a porno mag turned to the page with the auto review, because at least that pervert might actually buy a car.
• I walked up to a salesman at my local Toyota dealership and showed him my junk mail postcard: I earn a prepaid $50 MasterCard after I mail in the voucher they sign. Now, in true NASCAR tradition, I'd like to thank my sponsors Toyota and MasterCard (picture me now drinking your favorite soft drink, though no one has paid for me to do this yet).
• Here is the official webpage for this year's crop of Toyota drivers. Congratulations to Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin for being among the 12 crews competing for NASCAR's playoff-style Chase for the Championship. Although at this time of year, between real NFL games, real college football games, two Fantasy NFL lineups and the baseball playoff chases, NASCAR's postseason takes a back seat to mowing the lawn. Hey, that stuff is still growing fast each week. Unless someone gives me a riding mower with a TV screen tuned to the Chase, I'm only going to look up who's doing what when I need to reference it as an aside for one of these articles.
• The junk mail postcard suggested I drive a 2008 Sequoia SUV or a Tundra Double Cab SR5 ("FULL-SIZE VEHICLES WITH FULL-SIZE SAVINGS") Sorry, no sale. This summer my wife and I bought a 2008 Toyota Highlander as our Family Truckster (though not from a Toyota dealership, in case you were wondering if that's how I got on the Toyota gift card mailing list). Right now I do not need two cars that get worse fuel economy than a leaking oil tanker.
• Toyota's NASCAR drivers get their vroom on in Camrys. But I really wanted to drive a convertible, and my salesman told me Camrys don't come as convertibles. So I chose a Solara convertible. I picked out one to drive that was the color Blue Streak Metallic, because a) blue is my favorite color and b) Blue Streak was my favorite Transformer as a kid. And hey, when the convertible top goes back, it's as close as we have to real Transformers in this life. Don't you wish you had a car that was an Autobot friend?
• Why isn't there a professional racing league for convertibles? I guess for safety concerns. No matter how strong their helmets, I can't imagine there's much protection for drivers' heads during rollovers. But what if the cars where really light and the drivers were really fat? Would that allow a lower center of gravity, and make it less likely for a rollover? Some physics major: Please run a computer simulation on this and get back to me.
• Why don't car dealerships hire sexy models to ride along in the cars? Every muscle car magazine has well-endowed models hanging out all over the cover in order to boost magazine sales. Why don't car dealerships employ this tactic to sell the actual cars? Especially when it comes to the hard-sell for convertibles. It's the whole "wind through the hair" thing. You're telling me you can't hire some young lovelies from the local college campus who have shining hair down to the tattoo on the small of their back to take a ride along with the top down? The convertible's top down, I mean.
• By now I'll bet you're eager for the specs on the car. How many cylinders? How much horse power? I dunno, and I don't care. I gave you the Toyota website link a few paragraphs back, go bug them. The only two numbers I want to give you are total asking price and estimated gas consumption. The asking price on the model I drove was $32,310.13 -- and that was for cloth, not leather, interior. I'll bet I could negotiate that down to $32,310, easy.
The sticker said the estimated operation cost for fuel was $1,999 a year, based on a price of $2.80 a gallon. Meanwhile, the gas station across the street from the dealership was selling regular unleaded for $4.29 a gallon. Oops.
Not much horsepower in this personality
The biggest downer of the day was the salesman who took me for a spin. I mean, I can understand that the guy might have been less than enthused to go joy riding with a knucklehead like me so I can pocket $50. But I get the feeling I could have had dozens of $50 bills hanging out of every pocket, and he still would have had a first-gear personality. Here's what I'm talking about:
• At first, he couldn't find any Solaras in his lot. "Wow, they moved all the trucks around." You didn't noticed we started off walking toward the end of the lot filled with trucks and SUVs?
• When we pulled out, I noticed there was only 10 miles on the odometer. "Is this the '08 or '09?" I asked. He said he didn't know.
• I asked him what kind of car he drove. "I'm embarrassed to say an Impala." I don't know if he meant he was embarrassed that he didn't drive a car from the company he works for, or if he was embarrassed that he drove a freakin' Impala. He said he had been working at this dealership for 10 months and then went into a vague tale about how he was let go from a previous job because of the tight economy. I turned on the radio so I wouldn't get to the point in his sob story where he asks me if he can have my $50 MasterCard after I get it in the mail.
• Soon I discovered the only FM radio station that was tuning in was a slow jam block from the local urban station -- which is about as awkward of radio programming you can ask for to accompany two white male strangers driving aimlessly in a car together. "The antenna must be broken," he mused. Yeah, I hear that's a problem in the '08s or '09s or whatever the hell we were driving.
• My favorite ice-breaker conversation with car salesmen is to ask for their nightmare test drive anecdote. He said his worst day came from an 80-year-old guy in an Avalon who panicked while pulling into a Lowe's parking lot and drove both axles over a high curb. The happy ending for him was that the dealership's garage found no damage underneath. I'm sure that's a relief to whoever it was that eventually bought that car.
• As we're nearing the Interstate exit to get back to his dealership, I tell him that the gas tank light just went on. He said, "Yeah, usually my test drives don't go on for this long." I looked at the odometer and noticed it was now on 28 miles. OK, maybe 18 miles is a little long a test drive for a car I had zero intention of buying. But I rationalized it that I was actually test-driving two different cars -- one with the top up, one with the top down. Was I taking advantage of this shlub? Probably. But I'm sure I could have pulled over and picked up a 60-year-old hooker to keep him company through the ride, and he would have been too mortified to say no.
• Before I left, I asked him if I could have a promotional booklet about the Solaras. He rummaged through a bunch of cabinets in the lobby, but couldn't find one, so he just gave me the overall booklet for all Toyota models. Gee, thanks. Then I happily left the lot in my 1998 Mustang (130,000 miles and counting).
• You know, I take that back about "the biggest downer of the day." The biggest downer of the day came once I reviewed my 40 minutes with the salesman: He was boring to hang around with, surprisingly uninformed about his line of work and grappling to get by in a less-than-glamorous job in a brutal economy. And I realized I had just spent the afternoon with what I'm going to be like 10 years from now. It's going to take a fistful of $50 prepaid MasterCards to make me feel better about that.
