1
The most effective car dealerships maintain the aura of a celestial city, a place where one’s salvation is born in the womb of loan approval. Hordes of prospective car buyers make their exodus to the dealership and wait like pilgrims while their sales counselor disappears into a mysterious cubicle and performs the nail-biting credit check. Akin to Judgment Day, the credit check, which entails giving up one’s social security number and a comprehensive spending history, is modern society’s definitive measure of the soul’s health—its reliability, its self-sufficiency, and its accountability. If the prospective car buyer falls short of these qualities, then he is sent home with his tail between his legs. To be rejected by the bank is to lose one’s honor and this shame is translated in the inability to drive newer models of automobiles. On the other hand, the customer who proves worthy by having his credit approved is treated like one of the Chosen People as the dealership’s staff obsequiously groom him for his new car. They open the door for him, give him free floor mats and beam at him with a smile that says, “Congratulations, friend, you are part of the remnant chosen by God.”
2
To beg for the opportunity to go into debt by trading in a car that still has several years of life on it could be interpreted as a bizarre and self-destructive impulse. Yet it remains prevalent in part because making $400 dollar payments over the course of 60 months is a rite of passage in which the average citizen demonstrates his faith in a consumer economy driven by debt. That he lives pay check to pay check, that he has no reserves to cushion him in the case that he lose his job, that his lack of savings makes him precariously close to being homeless at all times, that his monthly payments are so oppressive that all he can wear are rags and eat canned foods is of little significance. What matters is that he is anointed as a Good Consumer at the car dealership where every three years he can trade in his “old” car for a new one and as such assert his optimism in the very economy that has him working overtime in order to pay off his car and to show the world that he can participate in the act of always getting the newer models of cars. This constant “upgrading” is a sign to society and himself that, no matter how much he lives in the red, he lives, through driving new cars, in a constant state of spiritual renewal.
3
Car showrooms feature a “reading area,” often supplied with freshly brewed coffee, muffins, and bear claws, where prospective car buyers can leisurely study the car brochures. Cleverly written, these glossy brochures have an abundance of photographs of a mother and father reading about the car in an attractive oversized bed, with or without their children. In either case, the message is clear: Buying our car makes you a steward of your family, for you are wise and concerned about your family’s safety, popularity, and general wellbeing, conditions that are maximized when you drive our automobile. Couples who buy our car enjoy domestic tranquility, which translates into hotter sex. Families who buy our car become a more cohesive unit and groom themselves, and their children, for middle- or even upper-class respectability. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough money to afford our car. Our financial advisors will do all that is possible to make the payment process as painless as possible. In the end it isn’t about the money anyway. Buying our car makes you a spiritual leader of your family. Giving your children a taste of the excellence that our car represents predisposes them to success. Therefore, not buying our car is a form of child neglect. Buying it, however, affirms your competence and assiduousness as a household leader. Be strong, fulfill your spiritual potential, and parent your children with the help of “our guiding hand” by purchasing our automobile.
4
The best sales counselor doesn’t really sell a car. He interprets the car’s hidden message to the customer. While this may sound overly mystical to some, it is precisely the mystical aspect of a car that appeals to a consumer, for no car is worth its money unless its elevated to the status of a spiritual deity. The effective sales counselor knows this principle. Therefore, he does not emphasize selling the car as a literal automobile but figuratively as something higher and nobler. The car’s virtues, like music or poetry, must be “heard” or “interpreted.” Thus, all good car salesmen are what we might call Car Interpreters, for they must interpret the car’s unique language to their clients. They must “decode” the car’s highly subtle text and reveal its “exquisite” language to others. Once the Interpreter succeeds at getting his clients to “hear” the car “sing its inimitable song,” his clients break into joyful, euphoric tears. At this point, the Interpreter does not have to sell the car. The car sells itself. Car buyers drive off the Interpreter’s dealership with a renewed interest in solving the riddle of human suffering, making habitats for the homeless in third-world countries, and protecting endangered rain forest wildlife, for having the heard the car sing its joyous, euphonious song, the Car Interpreter’s clients are never quite the same again.
5
Some car buyers bring a guide with them to the dealership. This is no ordinary guide but someone who, obsessing over cars and lacking the funds to feed his car-loving appetite, chomps at the bit whenever asked to accompany someone to the dealership in order that he may offer his expertise. More than an advisory role, this car junkie sees his assistance as a way of proving his worth, his loyalty, and his superior car knowledge. He fights to the death to win his friend the best deal possible and often humiliates the car salesman if he reveals an ignorance in the car in question. Therefore, the car salesman would be well advised to study his fleet of cars, for the guide will know all the car specs, including the cubic feet of storage, exterior width, recall history, and available upgrades. The guide’s arcane knowledge of cars and his overly aggressive “assistance” should not be surprising, for living on the margins of society, this guide lives vicariously through his friend’s expensive car purchase and therefore the guide will impose himself upon every step of the car-buying process. His obsession with getting his friend the best car and the best deal possible causes this guide to often second-guess himself so that he is prone to calling his friend at three A.M. to warn that perhaps they are “going down the wrong track” and should perhaps seek a different car altogether. Alas, the car buyer will find that his guide will be calling him at various hours in a state of anxiety, claiming to have finally made the “right decision” but then to flip-flop again and again until the car buyer has no choice but break ties with his volunteer guide.
What the car buyer must understand is that his guide induces insurmountable pressures on himself because his desperate quest for self-worth compels him to see himself as more of than a car expert but as someone who, through his fortitude and intense study, is helping his friend make a monumental “life choice” and as such the guide sees himself as a modern day torch-bearing Virgil helping his friend navigate through the purgatory of the car dealership. Unfortunately, the guide often makes himself a greater purgatory—or even an inferno—than the dealership ever could be.
6
To obscure the vulgarities that are concomitant with car buying, many dealerships strive to create a family atmosphere. Therefore, the staff wants to be perceived as a group of father and mother figures who offer wisdom, nurture, and general spiritual support to the customers who, in effect, become the staff’s “children.” In this setting, a car is not being purchased. Rather, the buyers are, by virtue of purchasing a car, bringing a “baby” into the world and the customers need the staff to offer comfort during this stressful and anxious drama. To attest to the staff’s role as lifelong family members, the sales counselors post hundreds of photographs of their adopted family members inside the dealership’s showroom. These photos usually show the customers standing outside their cars. Beneath the photos are sentimental captions. To attest to the bond, more photos are sent, usually during the Holidays, and the captions usually indicate how many miles have been driven on the car and how “great the service” has been. To reinforce, this family atmosphere, the dealership will have annual picnics where they invite their “family members” to trade-in their cars for new cars at “special rates” that are “available only to our special family.” In a society of disintegrating family connections, there are millions of lonely souls who are only too grateful to have car dealerships offering their services, not only as car sales counselors, but as surrogate family members.
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