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Common Whi
I always see small car dealers with a trailer home office and about 50 cars on their lot. Are they as scuzzy as they seem, or just as risky as buying from an individual. Any car I'd buy I'd take to an independent mechanic. Im just wondering if there's some tradition to those smaller dealers and that they might be crooked and fly by night. Any experiences or knowledge about small car dealers?
Answer
Good question. It's hit or miss with those places honestly. Those dealers are the reason that I got into the car business as a career. I was young, just married and super pregnant and my husband had a wreck and we needed a new car. Didn't have a lot of money to put down and we went to one of those places and they put us in a nice car, it was only about 3 years old, excellent condition....and the payments were like $560 a month, they ran us through a real lender. A subprime lender with high interest rates. But I didn't know that at the time, I was just happy to have a nice car. And then one day I realized my car loan was for 60 months....I was like, wait, couldn't we have gotten something brand new with a warranty for the same price or less? Yes. We could have. But I didn't know any better. I thought wow, these people are really making a lot of money! But it's not fair for them to do this to pregnant women!!!
So I applied with a nice car dealership. Lincoln/Mazda. And I learned to sell cars. Then I moved to Mazda/Kia. After I mastered Kia, I trained others on it at several different dealerships throughout the country. Then I decided it was time to check out the other side of the car business. I know pretty much everything there is to know about the new car side. Let's see if all the rumors are true about the buy here pay here lots....So I applied for a management position with one. A nice one, with a really nice bug building and some nice looking cars. Of course they hired me. The owner was crooked as I don't know what. Found out after I was working for him he is a convicted criminal, he uses the cars to run drugs all over the country, oh yeah it was pretty terrible. No payroll department. He paid me cash only. And he hated to pay me. At a new car dealership, I make about 30% off of the front of the deal and 10% off of the financing in the back end of the deal (off of the profit). This guy at the BHPH lot....he was only paying me 10% of the down payments I collected. Always promised he'd pay me more when he got some big check for some business thing he had in New York. And with only 10% of the down payments....I was still bringing home $5000+ a month. I sold 53 cars in one month, me and my finance guy. We financed everyone through a lender called Mark One, the king of sub-prime lending. Usually a 23% interest rate. (That equals $230 a month the customer pays just in interest). The customers we couldn't finance through the lender, we would do a BHPH (buy here pay here) deal on them, but they didn't know it. We told them it was done through a lending company. The lending company was called MAPAW. You know what that stands for? Miss A Payment And Walk. They had people fill out credit apps with pens from our repo company just for fun. I never once delivered a car the same day I sold it. They would get all the info, take the down payment and then tell them go home, ok, we will call you once we get it approved, it may take a few days, I may have to pull some strings, I'll get it done. And then a week later, we need $1,000 more dollars. Ok, thanks, still working on it. 2 weeks later....It's been a month since they first came to see us. They have given us $2,000 (a lot of the customers are on social security, welfare, making minimum wage) so at this point they were so desperate for a car they would take anything. So we put them in some piece of junk. You have NO idea how many times I'd get called "I'm a mile away and my car is smokin, what do I do?" Bring it back in, we will fix it for you, no problem. You pay half the cost of repairs. So we would just double the repair bill and make them pay half....therefore they thought we were helping them out. As long as the BHPH deals would come and make their payments to us for 60 days (which we usually broke down by weekly or bi-weekly payments) then that means the loan was "seasoned" and a bank would pick it up and buy it. For about 80% of the total loan value. Want to know what the total loan value is on these cars? Here's one, for example. A military kid named Cody, really nice guy I liked him a lot, but I didn't do his deal. I saw it after it was done. He was in a 99 Isuzu Rodeo (we probably paid $1500 for it at auction) he put like $2000 down I think (it was a good amount) and they financed him at about $12,000 on the loan. It was over a $10,000 profit deal AFTER repairs and fees and such. He was so happy to have a vehicle he sent 3 of his friends.
I learned enough, saw everything I had to see and quit after about 3 months. The real used car business is VERY UGLY. I'm not saying that All of them are like that, but 90% of them are. Sawdust to stop engine knocks...I know all the tricks. I will never ever recommend going to anything less than a reputable dealership.
What do accidents do the the value of your car?
jbgp1200
I have a 2002 Ford explorer XLT that I own outright. The car is a magnet for bad drivers. I have been hit in it about 5 times now. Always been noting more then body damage. However with carfax reports now available to the public, I am wondering what these fender benders will do to the over all value of my car. They are always fixed by reputable body shops, but because the car has been hit numerous times, I question how this will effect the resale value if and when i decide to sell the vehicle. Any thoughts on this?
Answer
To prove to potential buyers that the accidents were minor, it would be best if you keep all receipts for work done, and what the original costs for repairs were. It would seem it hasn't been damaged enough to have a salvage/rebuilt brand. If this does happen, you will see your value drop considerably, most people don't want rebuilt cars, however, some care only about how it looks, if it looks good, they think they look good, so there is always a buyer out there. Your accidents will be on record with the DMV, if the accidents were reported by insurance agencies, or if law enforcement was involved, and police reports were filed. The accidents are not broken down by the seriousness of it, it merely states an accident occurred with that VIN, on a certain date. Another thing you might be interested in is, some states are very far behind in their getting the accident data entered into the system. I was hired by a state to do just that, I entered accident info, then went on to the driver records, and added the info to those records. This state was two years behind in their reporting! 30,000 accidents per day happened, adding to the load already far behind. It took us six months to get caught up, at that point, you can imagine the ire of people upset that their driver licenses are being pulled for accidents that happened two yrs back. So, when you talk CarFax, Vehix.com and the other online services, they get their info from the public records held by the state. As you can see, if the state is behind with reporting, the services offered cannot be fully guarenteed.
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